{"id":644453,"date":"2026-04-30T10:59:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=644453"},"modified":"2026-04-30T11:00:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:00:49","slug":"showmax-shuts-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/644453-showmax-shuts-down.html","title":{"rendered":"Showmax shuts down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MultiChoice will shut down Showmax on Thursday, 30 April 2026, ending a service once positioned as the South African pay-TV giant’s answer to Netflix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MultiChoice announced the plan to shut down Showmax<\/a> in early March 2026. It said the decision was made following a comprehensive review of its streaming activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company, now part of French media giant Groupe Canal+, said the substantial annual losses experienced by Showmax were unsustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The streaming platform stopped accepting new subscribers from 31 March 2026, and MultiChoice set 30 April 2026 as the date on which it would shut down the streamer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MultiChoice has moved Showmax Originals and other select titles to a dedicated Showmax section on the DStv Stream app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Showmax content on DStv will be available to Compact and Premium satellite and streaming-only customers via the DStv Stream app,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The move ensures award\u2011winning African stories remain widely available after the Showmax service closes.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Existing Showmax customers have been given the option to continue paying the same R99 fee for DStv Stream Compact for a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 30 April, qualifying customers get trial access to DStv Stream Compact, and the promotional R99-per-month price takes effect from 1 May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The R99-per-month promotional price will run for a year, provided subscriber accounts remain up to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launched in August 2015, MultiChoice positioned Showmax as a homegrown competitor to international giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It prioritised local content and features suited for the African continent, and rapidly expanded to over 36 countries across sub-Saharan Africa within a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MultiChoice believed that Showmax would help it reach a combined subscriber base of 50 million users by 2028.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To achieve this, MultiChoice entered into a partnership agreement and sold a 30% stake in Showmax to Comcast’s NBCUniversal. The transaction concluded and took effect on 4 April 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multi-billion-rand relaunch fails to boost growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The streaming platform underwent a significant redesign and relaunched on NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform in February 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relaunched platform featured a new logo with a bold red colour and a revamped design. The launch also introduced standalone subscriptions for entertainment and English Premier League soccer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The change meant that users had to migrate to a completely new app and saw the phasing out of “Showmax Pro”, a premium subscription that bundled on-demand entertainment and live sports content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MultiChoice’s initial projections accounted for Showmax reporting trading losses, and it predicted that these losses would start to reduce in 2025. However, the opposite happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It reported trading losses of R1.2 billion in 2023, R2.6 billion in 2024, and R4.9 billion in 2025. Over the same period, Showmax’s revenue declined from R1.027 billion to R753 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MultiChoice said the decline was somewhat expected and only temporary. It justified the financial burden Showmax was saddled with on highly optimistic forecasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MultiChoice’s bill for multi-year technology licensing fees with NBCUniversal for its Peacock platform reached R6.83 billion by the company’s 2024 financial year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While these commitments were not yet recognised as obligations in its financial reporting, MultiChoice was contractually obligated to pay them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canal+ pulls the plug<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As of March 2025, the commitments had decreased to R5.82 billion as some obligations had been fulfilled. However, the remaining liability remained substantial relative to Showmax’s revenue base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, poor leadership and decision-making left Showmax with crippling financial commitments before it had a chance to reach scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a statement accompanying Groupe Canal+’s unaudited full-year results, the company said MultiChoice had failed to achieve the goals it set for Showmax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Groupe Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada described Showmax as being an “expensive failure”<\/a> and “not a commercial success”<\/a> on two occasions in early 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As you know, this was a severely loss-making activity on which we saw no recovery, no matter what was done,” the CEO said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saada said Canal+ quickly reached an agreement with Comcast to shut down Showmax as soon as possible after acquiring control of MultiChoice, but he could not share details about the negotiations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Showmax subscribers can continue to access some of its content through a free one-month trial on DStv Stream Compact, after which they can subscribe at a promotional R99 monthly price for one year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":644468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[21383,88200,104911,66933,92258,475,32140,53465,62312],"class_list":["post-644453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-canal","tag-dstv-stream","tag-dstv-stream-compact","tag-groupe-canal","tag-maxime-saada","tag-multichoice","tag-showmax","tag-streaming-platform","tag-video-streaming-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644453"}],"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\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644453"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644483,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644453\/revisions\/644483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}