DStv streaming price surprise

MultiChoice-owned Showmax and DStv Stream Premium are the only major video streaming services in South Africa that have not increased their prices since launch.

International video streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix often have to change their pricing to account for increased content acquisition costs, changing subscriber trends, and foreign exchange fluctuations.

While these changes are more frequent in their bigger markets, like the US, UK, and Canada, South Africa generally only sees adjustments every few years or, at worst, annually.

MyBroadband looked at price adjustments of the country’s biggest video streaming services and was surprised to find that MultiChoice’s offerings had not followed the same trend.

The company often takes a lot of flak from subscribers for the price hikes it implements annually, despite recent adjustments being below or in line with inflation.

When it comes to its streaming plans, MultiChoice deserves some credit.

Showmax is South Africa’s oldest subscription-based video streaming service.

At launch in August 2015, the service was priced at R99 per month and offered South Africans the ability to watch numerous movies and TV shows on-demand without a virtual private network service for the first time.

Since its rollout, MultiChoice has only adjusted Showmax’s price once — with a temporary R10 reduction after the launch of Showmax 2.0 in early 2024.

As of November 2024, over nine years after Showmax first launched, the cost of the main service is still R99.

Considering the impact of inflation, it is actually cheaper for many South Africans to hold a Showmax subscription than it was in the past.

MultiChoice also launched its streaming-only DStv subscriptions in 2020, with its top-end Premium plan originally priced at R819.

The service was later reduced to R699 before an increase to R799. Even so, the latter remains cheaper than when it originally rolled out four years ago.

MultiChoice also recently introduced a 12-month contract that fixes DStv Stream Premium at its old price of R699 for a year.

That price is particularly noteworthy because it is the same as the cost of a regular DStv Premium satellite subscription a decade ago.

When accounting for inflation, the prices of MultiChoice’s services have actually reduced.

The same is the case for US streaming giant Netflix, which first launched locally in January 2016.

Since that time, Netflix has adjusted its South African prices twice — first to switch from dollar-based to rand pricing.

Its top-end plan started at $11.99 in 2016, converting to roughly R190 at the time.

After switching to rand-based pricing, Premium’s price dropped to R169 per month.

In 2021, five years after launching in South Africa, Netflix increased its local prices for the first time, taking Premium to R199, while Standard was also bumped from R139 to R159.

Standard’s new price was nearly the same as the $5.99 (R158) when it first launched, while Premium’s was only R9 more expensive.

The increase of 5% over eight years works out to a compounded annual growth rate of just 0.6%, far below inflation.

Amazon Prime Video launched at $2.99 (R53) in South Africa for the first six months of a subscription, after which it increased to $5.99 (R80) per month.

The company only once adjusted pricing after launch, introducing a fixed rand subscription of R79 — about the same as the regular price after six months.

Two big price hikers

The two newest video streaming services in the country — Apple TV+ and Disney+ — have seen the biggest increases.

Although Apple TV+ only received one price hike in 2022, the increase of R40 over the original subscription of R84.99 worked out to an astounding 47% hike.

Up to 2024, the compounded annual increase works out to 8%.

Disney+ has increased its price by R20 in South Africa annually since it launched in 2022.

That works out to double the annual increase of Apple TV+’s subscription, at 16%.

The table below summarises the changes in pricing of the major video streaming services available in South Africa.