DStv’s big streaming limit fail

The continued decline of DStv Premium customers over the past two years suggests the broadcaster’s decision to slash its simultaneous streaming limit to one device did not help boost subscriptions.

In fact, there are indications that the move potentially accelerated annual Premium subscriber drops.

After years of allowing up to two simultaneous streams on a package, DStv announced an abrupt reduction to one concurrent stream in March 2022.

The move infuriated many customers, who quickly pointed out that they would no longer be able to watch on two devices simultaneously within the same household without taking up an additional subscription.

Although DStv said the policy change aimed to crack down on pirate streams, it was likely also intended to stop password-sharing between different households.

MyBroadband looked at how the 90-day active DStv Premium subscriber numbers changed before and after the streaming limit was imposed to see whether the limit had the desired impact.

From March 2019 to March 2022, the month the policy was applied, DStv Premium subscribers in South Africa declined from about 1.5 million to 1.4 million.

The subscription actually saw a brief increase in users between March 2020 and September 2020, the period with the strictest Covid-19 lockdowns.

In the two years since the implementation of its one-device streaming limit, Premium has lost another 200,000 subscribers and fallen to 1.2 million.

Therefore, its average annual rate of decline had effectively doubled.

The graphs below show the declines in DStv Premium 90-day active subscribers in South Africa, first in actual numbers and then in percentages.

It should be emphasised that the streaming limit might only have been part of the reason for the accelerated drop in subscribers.

Increased broadband penetration has resulted in more South African households gaining access to Internet packages that allow them to consume large amounts of online content, including streamed video.

What seems clear, however, is that the streaming limit did not lead to piggybacking households taking up their own subscriptions — at least not in large numbers.

While a Premium package is not supposed to be used by more than one household, the ability to spread the subscription cost across multiple people before the streaming limit was implemented made the product more affordable.

Premium’s value was also diminished for those households that did not share passwords but had become accustomed to the multiple streams that rival services offer.

Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV+ allow up to four simultaneous streams on subscription plans that cost a fraction of DStv Premium.

A password-sharing crackdown that worked

Netflix has also cracked down on password-sharing beyond one household, but there are several differences in how it has applied its streaming limit, first implemented at scale in May 2023.

Firstly, its system detects when users are within the same household or have recently been in the same household as the primary account holder.

Secondly, it launched a sub-account feature in numerous countries, enabling piggybacking users to get their own dedicated profile for watching content outside the main household.

Netflix reported that its more forgiving password-sharing crackdown strategy worked well, evidenced by a surge in new subscribers in the second half of 2023 that exceeded investors’ expectations.

To address the DStv streaming limit’s impact within a legitimate paying customer’s household, MultiChoice first revelead it was working on a “Proximity Control” system in October 2022.

This would supposedly be able to detect when users were accessing the same account in a household with the primary decoder, which would be called the “Home Base”.

Users would then be able to stream DStv without adding to the concurrent stream count.

The broadcaster confirmed it had started testing the system by August 2023, and a setting for “pinging” the Home Base is available on some Explora decoders.

However, the feature has yet to be officially launched.

Instead of Home Base, DStv rolled out a paid-for Extra Stream option, its version of Netflix sub-accounts, priced at R99 per month.

However, this feature is much more limited than Netflix’s sub-account capability.

Firstly, it is available only to DStv satellite subscribers, not those on its streaming-only packages.

In addition, Extra Stream is only supported for mobile devices, which means users cannot watch on a TV or laptop screen.

DStv reported an increase of 13% in active users on Extra Stream between September 2023 and March 2024.

However, the feature was only launched on 1 August 2023 and DStv did not report any specific numbers on its adoption in its first two months for its results ended September 2023.