![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/DStv-subscribers-in-South-Africa-.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDStv’s 90-day active subscribers in South Africa increased from 9 million to 9.3 million between the 2021\/2022 and 2022\/2023 financial years, a jump of 3%.<\/p>\n
MultiChoice said the actual 90-day active subscribers added were around 290,000.<\/p>\n
However, out of the three main segments that make up its customer base, only the entry-level Mass-market customers grew\u2014 climbing 10% from 4.9 million to 5.3 million.<\/p>\n
These customers are subscribed to entry-level packages like EasyView, Access, and Family, which are much cheaper than higher-end bouquets in the Mid-market and Premium segments.<\/p>\n
Each of these segments saw a reduction of about 100,000 90-day active subscribers.<\/p>\n
It is possible that some of these subscribers migrated to cheaper packages in the other segments, rather than dropping DStv altogether.<\/p>\n
In the Mid-Market segment \u2014 which includes Compact and Commercial packages \u2014 90-day active subscribers dropped from 2.8 million to 2.7 million, a 3% decline.<\/p>\n
On the Premium and Compact Plus packages that fall under the Premium segment, DStv lost 6% of its customers, resulting in a drop from 1.4 million to 1.3 million.<\/p>\n
While the broadcaster has been bleeding customers in this top-end segment for several years, this drop comes close to its worst yet \u2014 the 8% decline from its 2020\/2021 financial year.<\/p>\n
However, in that instance, Covid-19 was believed to have played a role in consumers’ cost-cutting.<\/p>\n
The charts below show how DStv’s 90-day active subscriber base changed between its 2022 and 2023 financial years.<\/p>\n
MultiChoice said load-shedding was a major reason for the disconnect between its 90-day and year-end subscriber numbers.<\/p>\n “There was a noticeable increase in churn when load-shedding reaches stage 4 and above, even when consumers have disposable income,” it stated.<\/p>\n It said the higher 90-day active subscriber figure shows customers still value the DStv product, while the 140,000 decline in year-end subscriber numbers showed customers were more selective when they signed up to avoid periods of excessive load-shedding.<\/p>\n The overall result of the above is a 5% decline in the blended average revenue per user (ARPU) of all DStv customers from R269 to R256.<\/p>\n Despite acquiring customers in the Mass-market, DStv’s ARPU of R96 in this segment has also come down.<\/p>\n This suggests a trend of customers within this segment who are downgrading from the more expensive entry-level packages to cheaper ones.<\/p>\n The graphic below from MultiChoice provides details about the key ARPU drivers at DStv.<\/p>\n Outside of South Africa, MultiChoice increased its customer count \u2014 both in terms of year-end and 90-day active subscribers.<\/p>\n Year-end subscribers in the Rest of Africa (RoA) grew from 8.48 million to 9.29 million, a 10% jump.<\/p>\n On a 90-day active basis, RoA subscribers increased by 11%, going from just over 12.79 million to more than 14.20 million.<\/p>\n However, the RoA division generated only around half the revenue of the South African business \u2014 R22.95 billion against R41.96 billion \u2014and a fraction of the trading profit \u2014 R898 million versus R8.49 billion.<\/p>\n Despite having more subscribers than the South African business, RoA contributed a blended ARPU of $7.3 (R136), 47% less than the South African ARPU.<\/p>\n MultiChoice’s latest annual results show that DStv lost about 144,000 subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":462487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[11115,85,19137,12745,45685,21484,18642,12747,87103,35,475,70167,427,15407],"class_list":["post-496187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-broadcasting-2","tag-dstv","tag-dstv-access","tag-dstv-compact","tag-dstv-compact-plus","tag-dstv-easyview","tag-dstv-family","tag-dstv-premium","tag-dstv-subscribers","tag-headline","tag-multichoice","tag-pay-tv-broadcaster","tag-satellite-tv","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496219,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496187\/revisions\/496219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nNow read: Disney+ price hikes in South Africa<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"