Kenya’s pay TV operators ended the first quarter of 2026 smaller than they began it. The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) reports that active subscriptions across the sector fell by 85,177 between January and March 2026. That is a 5.1% decline in three months. It leaves the market at 1,577,339 active subscriptions, or roughly 1.58 million.
The loss was spread across every delivery method. Terrestrial TV, satellite and cable all shrank. That breadth matters, because it tells you this was not one struggling brand dragging down an otherwise healthy market. It was a sector-wide contraction.
The single biggest faller by volume was GOtv, MultiChoice’s cheaper terrestrial service. It dropped 8.0%, losing 35,362 subscribers to finish at 405,013. DStv, the flagship satellite brand, fell 8.3%, shedding 22,450 to land at 248,053. Together, MultiChoice’s two brands lost a combined 57,812 customers, more than any other company in the quarter. We tracked the much steeper version of this collapse last year, when DStv’s reported active base fell by more than 84% in twelve months.
Wananchi Group’s Zuku had the roughest quarter in percentage terms. Counting both its satellite and cable arms, it lost 31,848 subscribers, a 13.5% drop, to 204,509. Its cable business alone fell by nearly a third, which dragged the entire cable segment down 30.4%.
Two operators bucked the trend
The quarter was not bad for everyone. Azam TV grew 5.3%, adding 1,798 subscribers to reach 36,031. StarTimes, counting its terrestrial and satellite lines together, grew 0.4% to 681,170, adding 2,724. Both sit at the cheaper end of the market, and both likely absorbed customers leaving MultiChoice. StarTimes is now the single largest pay TV operator in Kenya by active subscriptions, having quietly overtaken a shrinking GOtv.
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How the numbers are counted
One thing helps make sense of these figures. The way the regulator counts has changed recently, and it affects how you read any big swing.
Until mid-2025, the CA counted every decoder ever registered. Now it counts only “active subscriptions,” meaning accounts that paid something in the last 90 days. That shift stripped out millions of dormant accounts that were sitting on the books but generating no revenue. It gives a more honest picture of who is actually paying, but it also means the market looked far smaller the moment the new method took effect.
It also means the totals move around. After the new method settled, active subscriptions recovered to about 1.68 million by September 2025 before easing back to this quarter’s 1.58 million. So the 85,177 lost between January and March is a genuine decline in paying customers, measured the same way on both ends. It is a real drop, not a counting artefact.
What is actually pushing people away
Three forces explain most of the movement. The first is price. MultiChoice raised DStv fees at least five times in three years. The Premium bouquet went from about KES 7,500 in 2022 to KES 11,000 in November 2024, then KES 11,700 in August 2025. For many households, the value stopped matching the bill.
The second is the economy. A high cost of living has pushed families to cut non-essential spending, and a monthly TV bill is an easy line to drop. The third is where viewers are going instead. The same CA report shows fibre-to-the-home subscriptions up 7.0%, satellite internet (mostly Starlink) up 11.4%, and average mobile data use rising to 15.1 GB per person each month. Cheaper data and wider coverage make Netflix, YouTube and Showmax easy substitutes, and illegal streaming of live sport has eroded pay TV’s strongest card.
Canal+ is already fighting back
Here is the part the raw numbers miss. This data covers January to March 2026, which is before most of MultiChoice’s turnaround landed. French group Canal+ completed its takeover of MultiChoice in September 2025 and has been rebuilding DStv since. It cut decoder prices, launched the DStv Coins loyalty scheme, and reportedly committed around KES 13.7 billion to stabilise the business. It also broke from its annual inflation-linked hike by freezing 2026 prices and opened all 104 matches of the 2026 World Cup to lower-tier subscribers. We covered the June 2026 “Open View” promotion that upgraded paying customers to higher bouquets at no extra cost. None of that shows up in these figures.
So the practical takeaway is this. The CA’s Q1 2026 data confirms that Kenya’s pay TV market kept shrinking into early 2026, and that the decline now touches every operator except the two cheapest. But the next report, covering the months after Canal+ froze prices and started giving content away, is the one that will show whether the turnaround is working. That is the number to watch. For now, the only operators adding customers in Kenya are the ones that stayed affordable.
