DStv is in trouble

Protea Capital Management founder and CEO Jean Pierre Verster said that more affordable entertainment offerings mean DStv is in a tough space.

He shared his views on DStv’s new packages and Canal+’s investment case during an interview with Business Day TV.

On Monday, 7 September 2026, Canal+, which owns MultiChoice, unveiled a new look DStv along with an updated product offering.

MultiChoice CEO Willington Ngwepe said this was the biggest change to DStv’s offering in 15 years, providing a simpler offering for customers.

The new packages, which will launch on 17 September 2026, have five price tiers, ranging from R99 to R799 per month.

The biggest addition is a new DStv Sports package at R399 per month, offering 115 TV channels, Premier League and UEFA content, and T20 cricket.

However, the R399 sports offering does not include premier sports codes, like Formula, premium rugby, such as Springbok matches, golf, and ATP tennis.

Verster was not convinced that the changes to the current DStv packages are enough to drive growth in South Africa.

He explained that there are many services which compete for people’s attention and wallets, like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video.

“The rebrand and repacking of DStv in South Africa has not moved the needle much. Sport is not really sport if it does not include the Springboks,” he said.

“MultiChoice will struggle to grow revenue in South Africa through DStv. It may do slightly better in the rest of Africa.”

This, he said, is why Canal+ does not excite him as an investment. “The company would not be on my buy list,” he said.

Neal Hoogwerf, an equity analyst at Merchant West Investments, is also not bullish on Canal+ and MultiChoice.

He said that the premium DStv package remains expensive, presenting a challenge given the constrained financial state of South African consumers.

He added that high-value sports remain locked behind the top-tier package, limiting their target audience to an upper echelon of viewers.

Hoogwerf added that it will be challenging for Canal+ to achieve subscriber growth and maintain pricing power amid increased competition.

Piracy is an existential threat to DStv in South Africa

It is not only more affordable competitors like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video which poses a threat to DStv in South Africa.

Ngwepe said that pervasive piracy has also emerged as an existential threat, undermining the pay-TV service’s exclusive rights.

Piracy services were popular in South Africa before streaming services like Netflix launched locally. It was the dominant bandwidth consumer for years.

However, with the launch of Netflix and similar services, piracy started to disappear. People preferred the convenience and legality of streaming platforms.

This did not last. The flood of streaming services resulted in the fragmentation of content. It became difficult to get everything you wanted in a single subscription.

Many people now subscribe to one or two streaming services and get the rest of the content they want, including live sport, through piracy.

Canal+ Africa’s PayTV South Africa CEO, Byron du Plessis, described piracy as a big threat to the company.

Based on MultiChoice’s research, 25% of South Africans have watched pirated services, which gives an indication of how pervasive the problem is.

“Consumers can now encounter illegal streaming services that look and operate much like legitimate platforms,” the company said.

Pirate IPTV services can package thousands of channels and programmes into a single unauthorised service.

Operators can move quickly between websites, domains, and servers when enforcement action is taken, making it difficult to shut down an operator at the source.

Ngwepe said that DStv’s strength lies in its original and exclusive content, particularly its exclusive broadcasting rights to certain sporting fixtures.

Piracy undermines this strength, which means that South Africans have no reason to pay for the exclusive content on the DStv platform.