Broadcasting25.03.2026

Old DStv enemy making a comeback

By Staff Writer

Online piracy is making a comeback due to a fractured streaming landscape and deteriorating user experiences with paid services like Netflix and DStv.

After a significant decline with the launch of affordable streaming services, online piracy has seen a massive resurgence.

Visits to illegal streaming sites climbed from 130 billion in 2020 to 216 billion by 2024, and the trend has accelerated into 2026.

Global visits to piracy sites reached approximately 216.3 billion annually from 2024 to 2025, indicating they remain popular among millions of users.

Unlike the first wave of piracy, which was driven by a lack of legal options, the second wave is fueled by too many options.

With exclusive content deals aimed at driving subscriptions, users cannot subscribe to only one or two streaming services to get all the content they want.

The 2026 Decode Industry Survey highlighted the growing threat of content piracy to rightsholders and content service providers (CSPs).

It found that the fragmentation of rights and the high price of legitimate services are major contributors to piracy.

Piracy has also evolved. The advent of live streaming, for example, has introduced new vulnerabilities and challenges.

“Commercialised re-streaming is the biggest single piracy threat, followed by leaks from distribution partner networks,” it said.

A big challenge is that piracy is a low priority for law enforcement agencies, which means pirate providers are seldom caught or shut down.

The most effective way to fight piracy, the survey found, was not to try to punish users. Instead, it is to make legal services more attractive.

“The most effective way to fight piracy is to super-aggregate streaming services and price them realistically,” it said.

“Carrots are more effective than sticks. Individual consumers of piracy should not be sanctioned, but rather incentivised to use legitimate services.”

DStv’s piracy challenges

In its latest financial reports, MultiChoice, which owns and runs DStv and Supersport, identified content piracy as one of its top ten critical risks.

While piracy initially only affected movies and TV series, pirate streams have made live sporting events accessible to South Africans.

It has reached such critical levels that MultiChoice is leading the fight against content piracy with cybersecurity company Irdeto and law enforcement.

“There is an invisible war raging across Africa. In quiet corners of the Internet, content piracy is eroding the very foundations of Africa’s creative economy,” it said.

It said that the data regarding piracy is alarming. In five African countries, 17.4 million visits were made to the top 10 piracy sites.

Kenya led with 7 million visits, followed by South Africa with 5 million. “These aren’t just numbers. They represent untold losses in revenue,” MultiChoice said.

It added that, over the last five years, the boom in online viewing has supercharged illegal streaming.

50% of UEFA Champions League viewership is pirated, and the EPL, Formula 1, NFL, NBA, and UFC lose billions in revenue due to piracy.

It said that piracy is spreading because of outdated legal frameworks, which make law enforcement around the crime challenging.

“South Africa only adopted the Copyright Amendment Bill and Performers’ Protection Amendment Bill in 2024,” it said.

Another problem is that many consumers in South Africa still believe piracy is a victimless crime.

MultiChoice is fighting back

MultiChoice is deploying an advanced, multi-layered strategy to fight online piracy in South Africa and the rest of Africa.

It includes machine learning analyses of online behaviour, flagging suspicious patterns, and using a ranking algorithm to prioritise takedown targets, fast and at scale.

It also employed real-time detection for live events to detect and remove illegal streams before they go viral.

Forensic watermarking, which is embedded invisibly in MultiChoice’s content, enables Irdeto to identify pirated material without disrupting the user experience.

“Many pirate platforms pose as legitimate businesses. Irdeto works with financial partners to cut them off from the payment ecosystems that fuel them,” it said.

MultiChoice’s 2025 annual report revealed that it initiated 233 anti-piracy court cases, a significant jump from 111 in the same period the previous year.

Through its Partners Against Piracy (PAP) initiative, the group conducted over 155 successful raids, resulting in the arrest of 107 individuals across the continent.

In the 2025 financial year, there were numerous network takedowns. It reportedly shut down 4,351 illegal networks during the period.