Broadcasting4.02.2025

R1,000 for ultimate South African streaming bundle including sport and Netflix

South African households can get seven video streaming services providing millions of hours of content — including live sports — for around R1,000 per month.

MyBroadband looked at the wide range of video subscriptions available in South Africa to see how many of them we could fit into a combo on a reasonable monthly in-home entertainment budget.

Although there are many affordable options for under R200 in the country, these generally only offer movies, series, reality TV, and documentaries.

However, these do not offer live sports — a dealbreaker for money South African households.

The best option on this front continues to be DStv Premium, for which live sports has been a strong selling point from the get-go.

While DStv has only been around since the 1990s, its parent company MultiChoice was originally simply M-Net, which started out as just one TV channel.

At launch in 1986, M-Net offered live broadcasting of Currie Cup rugby, which was fundamental to its popularity under a predominantly Afrikaans market at the time.

Since then, MultiChoice has expanded its live offering to cover all major football, rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, motorsport, boxing, and athletics events, in addition to many more niche sports.

DStv Premium’s sports slate is particularly impressive when measured against competing services from overseas.

The rights to live sports are expensive and often paid for in foreign currency that is much stronger than the South African rand, which means a sports streaming package for the same price as Netflix is simply unrealistic.

People in Europe, the United States, and the United Kingdom must subscribe to multiple streaming services costing several thousands of rand to offer anywhere near the value of DStv Premium.

DStv currently offers a streaming-only Premium package for R699 per month on an annual contract.

If you wish to have the flexibility of a month-to-month subscription, the R799 DStv Stream Premium package will still cost R130 less than the satellite version.

All DStv Premium subscribers also get MultiChoice’s Showmax Entertainment subscription for free. Considering this plan costs R99 on its own, the actual cost of the DStv Premium subscription on contract is effectively R600.

Some of the content available on Showmax

Showmax’s library includes a strong catalogue of local original content, a lot of which resonates with African audiences.

It also boasts a great selection of international content from a plethora of major studios and production houses, including Warner Bros. and HBO.

The most well-known international streaming service — Netflix — will still be a must-have for many thanks to its ever-growing catalogue of hit originals.

Users who are willing to have just one concurrent stream on Netflix, can opt for the R99 Basic plan, which offers great value for money.

Another excellent international service is Amazon Prime Video, which has the largest library of any video service available in South Africa and also boasts popular originals in The Boys, Reacher, Clarkson’s Farm, The Grand Tour, Fallout, and Rings of Power.

Our last recommended addition is Apple TV+, which might not have it strong on the quantity front but is formidable in terms of quality offers, particularly when it comes to sci-fi series.

Combining DStv Stream Premium and Showmax on contract with these services works out to a monthly fee of R1,002.

There are two more local video streaming services which are completely free and require only an account with an email address and phone number to use — eVOD and SABC+ — offering linear channel streaming and some catchup content from eMedia and South Africa’s public broadcaster, respectively.

The one major service we could not include in our comparison without exceeding the R1,000 budget too much was Disney+.

The most affordable Disney+ subscription available in South Africa is R159, which means you would have to drop at least two of our paid subscriptions to fit it in.

Fortunately, all of our international services are month-to-month, so you could easily cancel two of them for one month and take up Disney+ instead if you wish to watch some of its content.

The table below summarises all the video streaming services you can get for around R1,000 in South Africa in January 2025.

ServiceMain appealConcurrent streamsPrice
DStv Premium streaming-onlyLive sports coverage, news, and local content1 on TV or computer, 1 extra mobile streamR699 (12-month contract)
Apple TV+Critically-acclaimed TV shows6 on any devices R125
Netflix BasicLarge library with highly popular original movies and TV shows1 on any deviceR99
Amazon Prime VideoExtensive library with growing original movies and TV shows3 on any devicesR79
Showmax HBO shows and Warner Bros movies, local original content including crime documentaries 2 on any devicesIncluded with DStv Premium
eVODLocal content2 on any devicesFree
SABC+Local content and newsNo limitFree
Total monthly priceR1,002
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