MultiChoice-owned Showmax and DStv Stream Premium are the only major video streaming services in South Africa that have not increased their prices since launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
International video streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix often have to change their pricing to account for increased content acquisition costs, changing subscriber trends, and foreign exchange fluctuations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While these changes are more frequent in their bigger markets, like the US, UK, and Canada, South Africa generally only sees adjustments every few years or, at worst, annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MyBroadband looked at price adjustments of the country’s biggest video streaming services and was surprised to find that MultiChoice’s offerings had not followed the same trend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company often takes a lot of flak from subscribers for the price hikes it implements annually, despite recent adjustments being below or in line with inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to its streaming plans, MultiChoice deserves some credit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Showmax is South Africa’s oldest subscription-based video streaming service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At launch in August 2015, the service was priced at R99 per month and offered South Africans the ability to watch numerous movies and TV shows on-demand without a virtual private network service for the first time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since its rollout, MultiChoice has only adjusted Showmax’s price once \u2014 with a temporary R10 reduction after the launch of Showmax 2.0 in early 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As of November 2024, over nine years after Showmax first launched, the cost of the main service is still R99. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Considering the impact of inflation, it is actually cheaper for many South Africans to hold a Showmax subscription than it was in the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
MultiChoice also launched its streaming-only DStv subscriptions in 2020, with its top-end Premium plan originally priced at R819.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service was later reduced to R699 before an increase to R799. Even so, the latter remains cheaper than when it originally rolled out four years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
MultiChoice also recently introduced a 12-month contract that fixes DStv Stream Premium at its old price of R699 for a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That price is particularly noteworthy because it is the same as the cost of a regular DStv Premium satellite subscription a decade ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When accounting for inflation, the prices of MultiChoice’s services have actually reduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same is the case for US streaming giant Netflix, which first launched locally in January 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since that time, Netflix has adjusted its South African prices twice \u2014 first to switch from dollar-based to rand pricing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its top-end plan started at $11.99 in 2016, converting to roughly R190 at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After switching to rand-based pricing, Premium’s price dropped to R169 per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2021, five years after launching in South Africa, Netflix increased its local prices for the first time, taking Premium to R199, while Standard was also bumped from R139 to R159.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Standard’s new price was nearly the same as the $5.99 (R158) when it first launched, while Premium’s was only R9 more expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The increase of 5% over eight years works out to a compounded annual growth rate of just 0.6%, far below inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amazon Prime Video launched at $2.99 (R53) in South Africa for the first six months of a subscription, after which it increased to $5.99 (R80) per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company only once adjusted pricing after launch, introducing a fixed rand subscription of R79 \u2014 about the same as the regular price after six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two newest video streaming services in the country \u2014 Apple TV+ and Disney+ \u2014 have seen the biggest increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although Apple TV+ only received one price hike in 2022, the increase of R40 over the original subscription of R84.99 worked out to an astounding 47% hike. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up to 2024, the compounded annual increase works out to 8%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disney+ has increased its price by R20 in South Africa annually since it launched in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That works out to double the annual increase of Apple TV+’s subscription, at 16%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The table below summarises the changes in pricing of the major video streaming services available in South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n MultiChoice gets a lot of flak for its annual price hikes. When it comes to streaming, however, there is not doubt it has been rather accommodating on pricing. <\/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":[96407,88200,90843,2054,32140,62312],"class_list":["post-568697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-disney-2","tag-dstv-stream","tag-dstv-stream-premium","tag-netflix","tag-showmax","tag-video-streaming-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568697"}],"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=568697"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573652,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568697\/revisions\/573652"}],"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=568697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Streaming service <\/th> Launch year and price<\/th> Latest price (November 2024) <\/th> Total increase from launch<\/th> Compounded annual rate hike<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> Apple TV+<\/td> 2019:
R84.99
<\/td>R124.99<\/td> +47%<\/mark><\/strong><\/td> +8%<\/mark><\/strong><\/td><\/tr> Disney+ Premium<\/td> 2022:
R119
<\/td>R159<\/td> +34%<\/mark><\/strong><\/td> +16%<\/mark><\/strong><\/td><\/tr> Netflix Premium<\/td> 2016:
$11.99 (R190)
<\/td>R199<\/td> +5%<\/mark><\/strong><\/td> +0.6%<\/strong><\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Amazon Prime Video<\/td> 2016:
First 6 months \u2014$2.99 (R40)
Thereafter \u2014 $5.99 (80)
<\/td>R79<\/td> +97.5%<\/mark><\/strong> (over initial promo price)
-1%<\/mark> <\/strong>(over first price after promo)<\/td>+9%<\/mark><\/strong> (over initial promo price)
–<\/mark>0.15%<\/mark><\/strong> (over first price after promo)<\/td><\/tr>Showmax<\/td> 2015:
R99<\/td>R99<\/td> +0%<\/mark><\/strong><\/td> +0%<\/strong><\/mark><\/td><\/tr> DStv Stream Premium (including Showmax)<\/td> 2020:
R819<\/td>R799 (month-to-month)
R699 (12-month contract)<\/td>-2%<\/mark><\/strong> (month-to-month)
-15%<\/mark><\/strong> (12-month contract)<\/td>-0.3%<\/mark><\/strong> (month-to-month)
-4%<\/mark><\/strong> (12-month contract)
<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"