Showmax is reporting that the current worldwide situation requiring people to stay at home has significantly impacted viewing behavior. The number of active users is up by 50%, the company says. The company is also saying that Play events have more than doubled. A play event is where someone clicks play on a TV show, movie or live channel.

One of the key video-on-demand indicators measured is the number of unique active users, or in other words, the number of people who use a service on a given day. Showmax says on their platform this number typically follows a weekly pattern with lulls on Wednesday and Thursday, and viewing then building from Friday to a peak on Sunday.

In February and through early March, things were as normal for the company according to their statistics. But then there was a significant divergence from around Monday 15 March.

On that day, instead of the number of active customers dropping off as it should normally, it stayed almost at the Sunday peak and then started rising for six days straight. There was then a big jump on Friday 27 March and the upward trend has continued from there.

Speaking about this, Niclas Ekdahl, CEO of the Connected Video division of MultiChoice said:

“We’re in the fortunate position of being able to do something to help people through this period. We’ve added live news and education channels to Showmax using the streaming functionality originally set up for sport. We’ve also created edutainment content rows to help parents, and we’re even adding yoga and other exercise programming. At the same time, we’re managing our traffic load on mobile networks to make sure internet access isn’t interrupted, and we’ll keep looking for other opportunities to make a difference.”