{"id":355689,"date":"2020-06-10T14:15:02","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T12:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=355689"},"modified":"2020-06-10T14:18:01","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T12:18:01","slug":"dstv-is-bleeding-premium-subscribers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/355689-dstv-is-bleeding-premium-subscribers.html","title":{"rendered":"DStv is bleeding Premium subscribers"},"content":{"rendered":"

MultiChoice Group has published its annual results for the year ended 31 March 2020, showing that its DStv Premium product remains under pressure in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The results showed a continued decline in the number of DStv Premium and Compact Plus subscribers in South Africa.<\/p>\n

MultiChoice combined Premium and Compact Plus into a single category for the purposes of showing year-over-year subscriber decline of 4% or 100,000 subscribers in the region.<\/p>\n

The company also changed its primary reporting metric for subscribers to active 90-day subscribers, which is defined as all subscribers that have an active primary subscription within the 90-day period on or before the reporting date.<\/p>\n

“As expected, the ongoing change in subscriber mix towards the mass market, combined with the pricing strategy, resulted in monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) declining 4% from R302 to R290,” MultiChoice said.<\/p>\n

“Growth was affected by one-off sport events in the prior year and some country-specific issues.”<\/p>\n

The company added that despite global and country-specific macro-economic challenges, it added 900,000 90-day active subscribers over the past year.<\/p>\n

“This represents growth of 5% year on year (YoY), which is somewhat lower compared to the prior year due to rising consumer pressure in many markets, drought-related electricity shortages in southern Africa, and the fact that last year\u2019s growth benefited from specific one-off events such as the FIFA World Cup which did not recur this year,” it said.<\/p>\n

“The 90-day subscriber base is split between 11.1 million households (57%) in the Rest of Africa and 8.4 million (43%) in South Africa.”<\/p>\n

Subscriber mix<\/h3>\n

DStv showed a reduction<\/strong><\/a> in its Premium subscriber mix last year, too, with the results showing that the company is increasingly relying on the adoption of its mass-market offering.<\/p>\n

MultiChoice classifies its subscribers into three market segments for reporting purposes: Premium, Mid-market, and Mass-market.<\/p>\n

These reflect the following subscribers:<\/p>\n