Multi-choice has announced a deal that will soon have them offer Netflix and Amazon Prime Video through their unified platform on DSTV. This was announced by Multichoice during the presentation of the annual results for the year ended March 2020. The two global video-on-demand services will be offered through DSTV in what seems to be a new upcoming Explora Decoder. Currently, the information points to this being offered only for South African subscribers. However, given DSTV is available across many African countries, this could be something that will be available for all markets where Multi-choice is present.
According to Multichoice’s financial results, the company added about 900,000 subscribers in the last year both through their DSTV and GOTV platforms. This means their total subscriber count currently stands at over 19.5 Million subscribers (8 Million in South Africa, and 11 Million across Africa). Which translates to huge numbers should a significant amount of them use or sign up for a Video-on-Demand service being added to their subscription.
It is still unclear how the deal will work, and how Netflix and Prime Video will be accessible. It is also still unclear if customers will need to pay extra for the services, or if one payment will mean access to everything from not only from DSTV’s channels but also from Netflix and Prime Video.
Speaking to MyBroadBand, Multichoice’s CFO Tim Jacobs said, “…Unfortunately, we are in a pre-release embargo period with both of these international players, which means that other than announcing that we have these two distribution deals, we can’t talk about the specifics until the formal consumer release.”
However, trials for the service are already live with some South African customers being onboarded to the new offering free of charge.
Over the years, despite the backlash over high prices, poor reception, and the continued discussion on the meaninglessness of paying for TV services when you can access stuff on-demand online, it seems Multichoice has found a way of surviving. The company already launched its own on-demand streaming platform, Showmax. They also announced plans of making DSTV Now its own stand-alone product.
With the Netflix and Prime Video deal, Multichoice will definitely be cementing their status as a one-stop curator of content. Meanwhile in Nigeria, the broadcasting regulator is seeking to ban Pay TV and Streaming platforms like Netflix and iRoko TV from making exclusive content.
