DStv in serious trouble
French media conglomerate Groupe Canal+ has been aggressively cutting costs at MultiChoice while attempting to halt an exodus of DStv subscribers.
Canal+ confirmed earlier in May that it would complete a secondary inward listing of its shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) on Wednesday, 3 June 2026.
The listing was part of the conditions Canal+ agreed to when it acquired MultiChoice in 2025, as the transaction led to the African pay-TV giant being delisted.
“This commitment was proposed voluntarily by the company in the context of its acquisition of MultiChoice,” Canal+ said.
In its pre-listing announcement, Canal+ disclosed the company’s financial position, which mainly comprised the figures it had published with its annual results.
When Canal+ published its annual financial results in March, it revealed a continued decline in MultiChoice’s subscriber base and profitability compared to the prior year.
MultiChoice’s revenue fell by 6% to €2.4 billion (R45.4 billion), while subscribers declined from 14.9 million to 14.4 million for the 12 months ended 31 December 2025.
At the same time, Canal+ announced it would permanently shutter streaming service Showmax, while offering voluntary severance packages at MultiChoice headquarters.
“Canal+ likely paid well over the odds, and when they got into the business to actually inspect the books, they found things far worse than what they expected,” sector analyst Nqobile Ndlovu told The Money Show.
“They’ve duly decided to cut the fat to stop the bleeding. This is open-heart surgery at the moment.”
Ndlovu, the founder of CashNSport Research & Advisory, said there wasn’t time for Canal+ to “tinker” with MultiChoice — it had been forced to take decisive steps.
“The business has been losing customers at a rapid rate,” he said. DStv’s subscriber numbers peaked at 17.3 million in March 2023 and have been in decline since then.
DStv in decline
Canal+ no longer breaks down DStv subscribers by region or by the market segmentation of its packages.
However, MultiChoice’s integrated annual report for the year that ended 31 March 2025 revealed that the number of DStv subscribers in South Africa declined by 589,000.
MultiChoice reported subscriber declines in South Africa each year from 2021 to 2025, and it was likely that this trend continued into 2026.
In 2025, it was striking that all segments of the DStv subscriber base declined, indicating an accelerating trend.
The premium base, which included Compact Plus and DStv Premium, declined by 96,000 subscribers. This represented a year-on-year decline of 9%.
MultiChoice’s middle-market subscribers declined by 99,000, representing a year-on-year reduction of 5% among DStv Compact and Commercial package subscribers.
The mass-market tier, including DStv Access and DStv Family, was down by 394,000, a year-on-year decline of 9%. This was the second year it experienced a decline.
Expect Netflix on DStv
Regarding the steps Canal+ was taking to turn DStv around, Ndlovu said the company was following a three-layer strategy.
“The first was: cut all of the contracts and agreements and renegotiate all of them. The second is: remove anything not making you money, such as sponsorships or anything to that effect,” he said.
“The third part will come a little bit later, in terms of slimming down the product offering so that it is simpler and easier to understand.”
Ndlovu said he believed Canal+ and MultiChoice were moving towards becoming mega-aggregators of entertainment content.
“I wouldn’t be surprised in a year from now if you could access Netflix through your DStv subscription.”
However, Ndlovu said Canal+’s challenge was that many people still access the service through a dish and decoder.
“The problem for them is, how do they go towards this content aggregator streaming service but still cater to the customer base they have at the moment?”
In addition to streamlining the product line-up, Ndlovu said that MultiChoice under Canal+ would also continue to cull underperforming content, such as the Winter Olympics and off-road racing.
“What people need to understand is that MultiChoice is no longer just a South African company. It’s a continental company with over 50 countries to cater for,” he said.
“So the tastes are for the continent and not just South Africa anymore. So whatever is not continentally popular will likely go, or will have a very difficult conversation.”
Ndlovu said there would be some pain for sports rightsholders in the next year to 18 months as licensing fees are renegotiated for the codes that survive the shake-out.
However, he also said this was short-term pain for long-term gain. “The money will come. What they are doing now is the surgery to stabilise the patient,” he said.
“Then they’ll go into acquisition of content to try and build a bouquet which is African and represents the interests of the continent.”
DStv subscriber numbers in South Africa
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