MultiChoice has a big risk
MultiChoice’s latest annual report has identified ten risks the company is actively addressing to protect its business, with piracy featuring prominently among them.
It noted that the increasing availability and adoption of broadband and reduced data costs have given rise to much higher levels of piracy.
People across Africa are illegally accessing content through pirate websites, pirate services, and social media feeds.
The illegal retransmission and piracy of content, including illegal connections, file sharing, and illegal Internet streaming of sports content, remain critical and growing risks to MultiChoice.
Additionally, the proliferation of social media platforms and short-form video content has further exacerbated these risks.
MultiChoice said short-form video content platforms, including TikTok, have made the unauthorised sharing and streaming of copyrighted material more prevalent.
However, while copyright infringement is prominent among the ten most significant risks to the company, MultiChoice also identified several ancillary risks that contribute to piracy.
MultiChoice explained that it applies a robust risk management approach in all areas of operation, including macro-economic factors, organisational changes, and the competitive landscape, which are ever-changing.
As part of its process to monitor and adapt its plans, MultiChoice listed ten of the most significant risks the company faces:
- Piracy — With the increasing availability and adoption of broadband connectivity and reduced data costs, illegal viewing of content from pirate websites, pirate services, and social media feeds continues to rise.
- Regulatory and licensing — The level of regulatory and competition authority risks across the African continent continues to pose significant challenges.
- Negative macro-economic factors — Negative macro-economic factors, such as high unemployment, rising or elevated inflation, increasing interest rates, political uncertainty and ongoing electricity shortages, place pressure on the economies of the countries in which it operates.
- Currency depreciation and liquidity — The continuous and often sharp depreciation of local currencies, especially in Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, Ghana and Angola, against major foreign currencies such as the USD puts pressure on the cost of running its business.
- Disruption and competition — MultiChoice operates in a highly competitive and rapidly evolving industry, where disruption and competition from various sources, such as strong global and local competitors, free alternatives, as well as changes in viewing behaviour, pose significant risks to its business.
- Cybersecurity — The security of its information assets, including content, customer and employee information, is critical. Failure to protect these assets poses a legal and reputational risk.
- Taxation — Tax audit activity across Africa continues to increase, prompted by the need for improved revenue collections in poor-performing economies. These often lead to unreasonable and aggressive preliminary stances taken by revenue auditors.
- Talent and skills scarcity — To move into the next generation of media services, MultiChoice requires talent and competence to operate in a data-driven world of big data, machine learning and AI, all areas with skills shortages globally.
- Technology — Technology is integral to its strategy and operations, and receives continuous focus to ensure we can seamlessly align key strategic requirements with its customer journey.
- Impact of continuous load-shedding — Load-shedding has become the norm in South Africa. High stages of load shedding continuously increase subscriber disconnections as they are unable to watch content for hours at a time.
Three of these ten risks include some aspect of the threat presented by wide-scale copyright infringement: piracy, disruption and competition, and cybersecurity.
MultiChoice is addressing this risk through numerous initiatives, which include using its cybersecurity business, Irdeto.
Irdeto is one of the leading companies globally that provides digital platform security, content protection applications, and cybersecurity solutions for the media and entertainment industry.
“In addition to contributing revenue and profit to the group, we leverage Irdeto to reduce and counter pirate activity across Africa,” MultiChoice said.
“We aim to reduce piracy from current levels via a comprehensive approach including technical, legal, and operational activities.”
Global anti-piracy fight
MultiChoice has shifted its anti-piracy fight from smaller resellers of IPTV services that provide illegal access to DStv content to the upstream providers in foreign countries that manage these services.
By blocking accounts linked to these operators during high-profile events, such as live sports broadcasts, MultiChoice hopes to discourage people from using illegal services.
During the first half of its last financial year, the company reported initiating 233 anti-piracy court cases, compared to 111 during the same six-month period last year.
While this declined in the second half of the year, MultiChoice told MyBroadband this did not reflect reduced enforcement. Instead, it was shifting its strategy towards more targeted and efficient interventions.
“We have concentrated our resources on fewer higher-impact cases rather than volume, focusing on upstream targets which has a bigger impact on users of illegal piracy sites and apps,” MultiChoice said.
“Our monitoring and anti-piracy toolsets have evolved significantly in the past 12 months, allowing us to more easily identify and block our platform from being utilised in streaming piracy operations.”
MultiChoice stated that while many suspects were involved in selling and distributing piracy apps in South Africa, these were commonly resellers of global pirate platforms.
The company said its teams identified accounts used to resell streams and deployed countermeasures to block them.
MultiChoice said this practice undermines the credibility and reliability of piracy apps for users, particularly during major sporting events. Its strategy appears to be working.
MyBroadband has observed increased complaints online about the performance of a notorious IPTV service that illegally streams DStv channels — Waka TV.
Several users reported that the service’s on-demand offering remained reliable, but DStv channels had been frequently stuttering or were completely non-responsive in recent weeks.
The fact that the issues were specific to DStv channels, rather than the platform itself, could suggest they were due to MultiChoice’s interventions.
One user reported that Waka TV’s support line stated DStv was “sabotaging” the service. Searches for “Waka TV” on Facebook and X also revealed numerous complaints about DStv channel performance.
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