{"id":635595,"date":"2026-03-24T15:20:41","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T13:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=635595"},"modified":"2026-03-24T15:44:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T13:44:04","slug":"dstv-supersport-slashes-afrikaans-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/635595-dstv-supersport-slashes-afrikaans-commentary.html","title":{"rendered":"DStv SuperSport slashes Afrikaans commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trade union Solidarity has questioned why SuperSport, and the new group owner of MultiChoice, France’s Canal+, has scaled back Afrikaans-language commentary on DStv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an open letter, it cited the recent example of the South African national cricket team’s ongoing tour of New Zealand, where Afrikaans commentary for the games is no longer available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the latest figures from the 2022 National Census, approximately 6.5 million people in South Africa are first-language Afrikaans speakers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Without any public consultation, a decision was made that the only commentary language for the tour would be English,” said Pieter Jordaan, head of news and publicity at Solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jordaan asked SuperSport who in the broader group structure made the decision to cut Afrikaans commentary, at a time when Canal+ executives have reaffirmed their commitment to local content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was indicated that the group\u2019s strategy will rely on greater investment in local content and stronger relationships with local markets,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Mignot, Canal+ Africa CEO, previously said that it would make no sense for them to reduce the content made in Afrikaans and Zulu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It would be counter-strategic and counterproductive. So that is absolutely not what we will do,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerns were mounting that Canal+ would scale back locally produced series and movies and replace them with locally dubbed versions of international series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It announced that KykNET would run an Afrikaans-dubbed version of the popular Paramount+ series Landman<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Jordaan, the decision to scale back local language content on DStv is “difficult to understand.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said viewers in higher socio-economic segments prefer content in their mother tongues, and removing these options from notable live sports like national cricket is a financial mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is especially the case amid a tough financial position for MultiChoice and a mass exodus of its subscribers in South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since March 2023, MultiChoice has lost 2.8 million subscribers<\/a>, bringing its total to 14.4 million as of December 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first subscribers to depart the platform were its high-value Premium users, who dropped subscriptions in droves in 2016 following the local launch of Netflix. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response, MultiChoice resorted to pushing its more accessible \u201cCompact\u201d and \u201cAccess\u201d tiers, but even these segments have struggled with subscriber retention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Afrikaans-speaking viewers make up a relatively small portion of the total population, but they are overrepresented in the pay-television market,” Jordaan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained that this is because the Afrikaans community is strongly represented in the middle- and higher-income brackets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He attributed the commercial success of the Afrikaans-only channel KykNET to these viewers, saying that it, alongside SuperSport, is among DStv’s most advertising-valuable channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solidarity has reached out to MultiChoice to ask why it has decided to remove Afrikaans-language commentary from sporting matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DStv slowly winds down Afrikaans commentary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jordaan alleged that MultiChoice has slowly reduced Afrikaans-language broadcasts on SuperSport to a “second-tier product.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said Afrikaans commentary teams were rarely present at important games during the recent SA20 cricket tournament and several cricket events broadcast before that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Afrikaans commentators were seldom, if ever, present at the ground alongside their English (or isiXhosa) counterparts to provide live analysis,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“To treat the Afrikaans viewing community in this way, by offering a product that is of a secondary standard, inevitably raises questions about SuperSport\u2019s attitude towards its Afrikaans audience.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During those events, Afrikaans commentary was still available, just not with the live broadcasters. During the Proteas’ latest tour of New Zealand, there is no Afrikaans commentary option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The new group owner, Canal+, has repeatedly emphasised that the future of pay television lies in strong local content, local languages and loyal local audiences,” Jordaan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Afrikaans content is one of the clearest examples of exactly such an audience: stable, loyal, and willing to pay for quality content.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trade union Solidarity has asked MultiChoice and its parent why it had decided to cull Afrikaans commentary for sporting matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":601194,"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":[21383,101558,16570,475,91041,143],"class_list":["post-635595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-canal","tag-david-mignot","tag-kyknet","tag-multichoice","tag-pieter-jordaan","tag-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635595"}],"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\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635595"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635660,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635595\/revisions\/635660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}