[imagesource:pexels/christianosinisterra]

There’s a time and a place for DStv, like when everyone wanted to watch the Rugby World Cup or other major sporting events that prove impossible to find on other streaming platforms.

But since the end of the RWC, more and more South Africans have dumped their DStv subscriptions, leaving the company in the lurch.

MultiChoice has haemorrhaged this loss – resulting in a staggering R911 million loss for the six months between 1 April and 30 September 2023, which is a significant swing from the R55 million after-tax profit it posted over the same period last year, notes MyBroadband.

In all, it lost half a million subscribers in South Africa in the last year, with a drop from 9.115 million to 8.629 million.

Moneyweb reports that most of this loss came from the 311,000 subscribers who were basically gifted subscriptions to ease the load-shedding woes, in the hope that as the power cuts eased, they would start paying for subscriptions and contributing to revenue. But this did not happen quite as planned.

“While [MultiChoice] has supported its subscribers with similar campaigns during challenging periods like the Covid-19 lockdowns, we can only do so for limited periods”.

For the first time since its listing in 2019, it has lost subscribers in all three segments: premium, mid-market and mass market.

Most of the pain is being felt in that middle market (Compact customers), where subscribers are down 14% between September 2022 and September 2023. It is likely that Compact Plus subscribers are down by a similar amount. The mass market segment (Family, Access, EasyView) saw a 1% drop in subscribers.

Load-shedding remains the “most immediate challenge in terms of subscriber activity”, according to the group, resulting in its customers becoming not active for 97 out of every 365 days – more than three months out of every 12.

“The South African business had to contend with the effects of ongoing high levels of load-shedding as 43% of the days in the reporting period were impacted by stage 4–6 load-shedding,” MultiChoice stated.

While MultiChoice blames power interruptions, cost of living pressures, and sharp depreciation in local currencies against the US dollar for the decline in profitability, customers say it’s also because it’s unaffordable and generally not worth it:

I’ll come back the day you offer sports packages only.

— Luvuko Nombembe (@luvukonombembe) November 15, 2023

The gripes range from packages on offer not being tailored to individual viewing needs, the frequent ad breaks, with repeats of old content and a lack of in-demand shows also adding to frustrations.

Today DSTV lost a 3 year customer, l was tired of the repeat 1980 movies, repeated cartoons for my 3 year old!

R450 was just too much for that bull, Anyway now that we moved to Wifi- where do y’all watch football? 😭 pic.twitter.com/YDgxLZzYvg

— Dr Ghost ®️ (@JamesChego9) November 15, 2023

DStv has seen its half-year after-tax earnings swing from a R55million profit, to R911 million loss. DStv also reported a 1% decline in revenue from R28.7 billion to R28.3 billion, while operating profit declined 22% from R6.2 billion to R4.8 billion. In short DStv is making loss pic.twitter.com/IlFM9X2tCz

— Man’s NOT Barry Roux (@AdvoBarryRoux) November 16, 2023

Watchers have more options now and DStv needs to catch up and adapt to what’s on demand.

[source:mybroadband&moneyweb]