DStv vs international satellite TV operators — South Africa getting a raw deal

Residents in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and France can get high-end satellite TV packages at lower prices than South Africa relative to the overall costs of goods and services in these countries.

According to a report from ResearchandMarkets.com, the radical rise in online streaming will see global pay-TV satellite customers decline by about 12 million between 2021 and 2027.

However, the most significant declines are expected in countries like the US, where many customers are migrating to Internet-based products.

On the African continent, where broadband penetration is still low, satellite TV subscribers are expected to still grow for a while across major providers like DStv, Canal+, StarTimes, and StarSat.

According to a forecast from Digital TV Research, MultiChoice is slated to increase its subscriber base outside South Africa to 20.8 million by 2028, a substantial increase from the 13 million reported by September 2022.

In South Africa, which is seeing comparatively faster broadband growth than much of the rest of the continent, the base is expected to shrink by about 500,000 by the same year.

However, that is still a relatively small decline as it has over 9 million customers in the country, making it the most popular pay-TV service by a significant margin.

While not the most-subscribed package, the most sought-after product it has in South Africa is DStv Premium.

But in recent years, DStv subscribers have increasingly complained about price increases on their packages, resulting in a decline in premium customers in particular.

For sports lovers, DStv Premium can still offer great value for money, despite costing nearly R1,000 per month (including on-demand and XtraView access fee) — substantially more than any popular video streaming service in the country.

DStv’s SuperSport offering includes live coverage of most of the world’s major football, rugby, cricket, golf, motorsport, tennis, and boxing events.

We compared DStv Premium’s price to services from other satellite operators outside South Africa — including heavyweights like Canal+ and Sky.

We came up with five high-end packages from overseas providers which include similar types and volumes of channels as DStv Premium and compared them in the table below.

The prices used were for packages that included decoders, simultaneous viewing environments, sports, and at least HD-quality channels.

Based on a direct price conversion, it would appear that DStv Premium is a great deal when compared to major overseas services.

However, our comparison aimed to show how the pricing of the options compared from the perspective of residents in each country, not only from a South African’s.

That requires adjusting the prices using purchasing-power-parity (PPP).

PPP estimates how much money you would need in a foreign country (in their currency) to buy the same things you do in your home country.

Based on the World Bank’s PPP index, for a basket of products worth R999 in South Africa, a person in the US would generally have to spend $140.12.

That’s 27% more expensive than the $109.99 price of Dish TV’s America’s Top 250 package.

For a French resident, R999’s worth of South African products would cost €100.73, nearly double the price of Canal+’s high-end package with comparable features to DStv Premium.

The difference was biggest when compared to New Zealand, where the value of goods costing R999 in South Africa would work out to NZ$205.74, 142% higher than the price of a Sky TV plan with similar features to DStv Premium.

The case was similar for Australia, where a South African basket of R999 would cost AU$235.11, 137% more than a Foxtel Platinum Plus plan.

Another way to show the price differences was to convert the prices of the overseas’ services to rand using the PPP, which would result in the same price differences on a percentage basis.

The table and charts below show the adjusted price of DStv Premium when considering PPP to compare its cost in South Africa to the relative costs of the package in other countries.

In the case of Australia and the United Kingdom, we factored the R159 monthly cost of Netflix into the price of DStv Premium, as it was included in the Foxtel and Canal+ packages.

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Now read: DStv vs sports streaming services in South Africa