MultiChoice’s multi-billion-rand “hold my beer” blunder
MultiChoice’s decision to bet the farm on Showmax and pin the company’s hopes on the streaming service was misguided and ill-informed.
On 11 March 2026, MultiChoice’s new owner, Canal+, released its annual financial results for the year that ended on 31 December 2025.
The company described MultiChoice’s performance in 2025 as challenging, with subscriber and revenue declines.
The DStv subscriber base decreased from 14.9 million to 14.4 million, revenues decreased by 6%, and adjusted EBIT fell by 14%.
The Canal+ share price plummeted by 19.53% following the results, which showed the impact of MultiChoice’s poor results on the company.
This is a far cry from MultiChoice’s promise of several strategic areas where they saw strong prospects and future growth potential less than a year ago.
It said there were several specific positive trends and strategic shifts that they believe bode well for the future.
MultiChoice said the rate of decline in DStv subscribers had slowed, which it attributed to its retention initiatives beginning to stabilise the core of the business.
Management highlighted that their NextGen DStv products were seeing strong adoption by the existing base.
This included DStv Stream revenue growing by 48%, DStv Internet subscriber growth of 45%, and the DStv Rewards loyalty program growing to 2.5 million active members.
It also justified the big Showmax investment, saying that active paying subscribers grew by 44% year-on-year and that it gained significant regional market share.
However, the latest Canal+ results and the market reaction showed that these green shoots were mostly bluster.
MultiChoice remains in deep trouble, and it will need a lot of work to turn the company around and make it a prosperous enterprise.
Canal+ has launched a turnaround plan to fix MultiChoice, which includes a €100 million investment launching in 2026 to reignite subscriber growth.
The Showmax blunder
One of the biggest reasons for MultiChoice’s financial misery is its misguided strategy to pin its hopes on Showmax for future growth and profits.
Former MultiChoice CEO Calvo Mawela regularly told the market that Showmax was the company’s future growth engine.
Mawela and other executives were highly bullish on Showmax, pitching it as the key to the group’s survival as traditional satellite TV plateaued.
He said Africa was the final frontier for streaming and said that Showmax would lead the race to dominate the continent with local content.
MultiChoice projected that Showmax would reach $1 billion in annual revenue by 2028 and target 16 million active subscribers.
It is also believed that Showmax would help it reach a combined subscriber base of 50 million users by 2028.
To achieve this goal, it sold a 30% stake in Showmax to Comcast in 2023 and relaunched Showmax 2.0 in early 2024 using the Peacock technology platform.
The broadcaster pumped billions into the streaming platform and incurred heavy losses in its attempt to gain market share.
MultiChoice described the heavy losses as a peak investment cycle that would eventually lead to a break-even point by 2027.
However, the tremendous Showmax subscriber growth projected by the management team never materialised.
Its trading loss increased from R1.2 billion in 2023 to R2.6 billion in 2024 and R4.9 billion in 2025.
On March 5, 2026, MultiChoice and Canal+ announced they would phase out and discontinue Showmax.
Management cited substantial annual losses that had become unsustainable as the reason for pulling the plug on the streaming service.
Highly predictable outcome
What is most surprising about MultiChoice’s Showmax blunder is that it was a predictable journey. Success was the unlikely outcome.
MultiChoice’s ambitious plans to create a profitable streaming service through J-curve growth and $1 billion in revenue were always unrealistic.
Many other streaming services have tried and failed. This includes CNN+, which was shut down one month after launch because of poor performance.
Even large streaming providers like Disney+, Warner Bros., Discovery, and HBO Max struggle to turn a profit.
However, the best examples come right here from South Africa. Numerous top companies launched streaming services, and they all failed.
MTN launched a streaming service, called FrontRow (Vu), in December 2014. It shut down in May 2017 due to a lack of demand.
Cell C launched its entertainment platform, Black, in November 2017, but pulled the plug on the service in November 2019.
Vodacom launched its streaming service Video Play in August 2015. It discontinued the service in June 2022.
Telkom launched TelkomONE in November 2020, offering a range of free content, including SABC channels and news, as well as paid-for movies and TV shows.
It canned the project within two years and handed over its platform to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) on 17 November 2022.
There were also many other failures, including the Altech Node, Times Media Group’s Vidi, OnTapTV, and Econet’s Kwesé Play.
Considering the tremendous global competition and graveyard of local services, it is difficult to understand why MultiChoice thought Showmax would be successful.
It looks like a case of the management team saying “hold my beer”, thinking they would prove everyone else was not competent and that they would show them the way.
Unsurprisingly, Showmax went the same way as all the other video streaming services in South Africa that failed.
| Service | Operator | Launched | Closed Down |
| Node | Altech | September 2014 | September 2015 |
| Vu | MTN | December 2014 | May 2017 |
| Kwesé Play | Econet | September 2017 | August 2019 |
| Black | Cell C | November 2017 | November 2019 |
| Video Play | Vodacom | August 2015 | June 2022 |
| TelkomONE | Telkom | November 2020 | November 2022 |
| Showmax | MultiChoice | August 2015 | Soon |
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