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SABC+ streaming service<\/p><\/div>\n
Despite not achieving anywhere near its target and losing some momentum from its initial uptake, the broadcaster said SABC+ is the fastest-growing OTT platform in the country.<\/p>\n
While a lack of official data from rival streaming services makes that difficult to confirm, some industry estimates suggest the broadcaster’s claim rings true.<\/p>\n
Digital TV Research<\/strong><\/a> has forecasted that South Africa’s most popular streaming service \u2014 Netflix \u2014will have about 4.15 million subscribers across all its African markets by the end of 2023.<\/p>\n Even if one assumes that as much as 80% (3.32 million) of these subscribers were in South Africa, Netflix would have added an average of about 474,000 subscribers each year since launching in the country in\u00a0 January 2016.<\/p>\n South Africa’s biggest pay-TV broadcaster, MultiChoice, previously estimated<\/strong><\/a> that Netflix added between 300,000 and 400,000 subscribers in the first two and a half years after its launch.<\/p>\n Taking the above estimations into account, the SABC+ uptake seems rather impressive.<\/p>\n However, one needs to consider that the SABC+ service is free, while Netflix and many of its rival streaming are subscription services.<\/p>\n There was one major event in the past few months that helped boost SABC+ growth.<\/p>\n The broadcaster told MyBroadband it recorded a “huge” surge in registrations during the 2023 Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n It very nearly missed out on offering the tournament, only securing a last-minute deal with MultiChoice<\/strong><\/a> to sub-license the rights to 16 matches.<\/p>\n After it refused to pay a reported $2 million for the rights to show all seven confirmed and potential Springbok matches, three companies funded the final deal in exchange for advertising spots.<\/p>\n While the broadcasts appeared to go smoothly on TV, SABC+ got off to a shaky start when it went down<\/strong><\/a> for most of South Africa’s first match of the tournament.<\/p>\n Examples of error messages and issues on the SABC+ app and website during the Springboks’ game against Scotland on 10 September 2023.<\/p><\/div>\n The SABC blamed the issue on “unprecedented” demand and promised a fix.<\/p>\n The broadcaster told MyBroadband that the capacity thresholds of the offering were increased to accommodate the spike in demand,<\/p>\n Several users continued to report some intermittent issues with the platform in a few subsequent games, but by the knockout stages, the service seemed to be holding its own.<\/p>\n The highest number of concurrent viewers on SABC+ during the RWC 2023 was over 210,000 during the final between the Springboks and All Blacks.<\/p>\n The unique viewer count for the final stood at 100,000.<\/p>\n While these numbers are solid, they are nowhere near the 2.5 million who tuned in for the final on SABC 2.<\/p>\n Over the duration of the tournament, SABC recorded 15.5 million total viewers and 12.4 million viewers over the age of 15 on its TV channel.<\/p>\n The SABC also revealed how many people watched the Rugby World Cup final through free-to-air TV and the SABC+ streaming platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":469395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[35,475,2054,68938,361,62242,70826,62312],"class_list":["post-514181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-headline","tag-multichoice","tag-netflix","tag-public-broadcasting","tag-sabc","tag-sports-broadcasting","tag-sports-broadcasting-rights","tag-video-streaming-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514181"}],"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=514181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":518101,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514181\/revisions\/518101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A Bok-sized boost<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/SABC-Plus-streaming-service-crashes.jpg\")
\nNow read: Showmax shutting down outside Africa<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"