MultiChoice’s latest annual results have revealed that the broadcaster has continued to bleed customers in its valuable premium segment in South Africa.
As of March 2024, the DStv premium segment’s 90-day active subscribers stood at 1.8 million, down around 200,000 subscribers a year ago.
The premium category includes subscribers on the two most expensive DStv packages — Premium and Compact Plus.
These customers contribute the highest average revenue per user (ARPU) of DStv’s subscribers.
Losses in the premium segment have a bigger impact than equivalent subscriber losses among Compact, Family, Extra, Access, or EasyView users.
MultiChoice started reporting the Premium and Compact Plus subscribers together following a big decline in Premium-only customers between March 2015 and March 2018.
A key moment during this period was the local launch of Netflix in early 2016, which provided an alternative source of entertainment for South African households.
Among them were many that could afford the data necessary for video streaming — fitting the profile of the typical DStv Premium customer.
For the first time, these customers could use an international video streaming service without using a virtual private network (VPN).
The fact that Netflix costs a fraction of a DStv Premium plan made its offering all the more attractive.
In the years that followed, MultiChoice itself acknowledged that the launch of Netflix and other streaming services presented an existential threat to its DStv business.
By combining its Premium and Compact Plus customers, MultiChoice made it impossible to see what was happening with its most affluent customer base.
Obfuscation only worked for a while
The total premium segment actually saw positive growth for a few years after Netflix’s launch.
While it kept shrinking in South Africa, growth in the Rest of Africa helped cushion the blow.
However, in more recent years, the premium segment has been in decline across both the South Africa and the Rest of Africa markets.
Between March 2018 and March 2024, the total premium subscriber base decreased from 2.4 million to 1.8 million, a 25% decline.
In South Africa, premium segment subscribers now stand at 1 million, down from 1.6 million six years ago, while Rest of Africa subscribers have remained roughly the same at 800,000.
The tables and graph below show how DStv’s premium segment customers declined between 2018 and 2024.
| 90-day active DStv premium segment subscribers South Africa |
||
| Financial year-end | Change from previous year | Subscribers |
| March 2018 | n/a | 1.6 million |
| March 2019 | -7% | 1.6 million |
| March 2020 | -4% | 1.5 million |
| March 2021 | -8% | 1.4 million |
| March 2022 | -4% | 1.4 million |
| March 2023 | -6% reported (restated to -21%) | 1.3 million (restated to 1.1 million) |
| March 2024 | -8% | 1.0 million |
| 90-day active DStv premium segment subscribers Rest of Africa |
||
| Financial year end | Change from previous year | Subscribers |
| March 2018 | n/a | 0.8 million |
| March 2019 | +16% | 1.0 million |
| March 2020 | +23% | 1.2 million |
| March 2021 | -10% | 0.9 million |
| March 2022 | +14% | 1.1 million |
| March 2023 | -10% | 0.9 million |
| March 2024 | -9% | 0.8 million |
MultiChoice has obfuscated the decline in DStv Premium subscribers by lumping them together with Compact Plus in the above figures.
However, MyBroadband has estimated how this figure could have changed since it was last published by using certain historical figures and trends.
When MultiChoice was still reporting standalone Premium subscribers, you could determine the proportion of the total customers that used the top-end package.
That number dropped from 39% in March 2012 to 14% in March 2012, an annual 3.5 percentage point decline.
Assuming the decline slowed down to around half that rate over the next six years, DStv Premium customers would have made up only around 3.76% of the company’s total subscriber base by March 2024.
At the end of March 2024, DStv’s total actual subscriber base stood at 15.7 million.
Based on our methodology, there were an estimated 588,967 Premium-only subscribers across Africa, 1.6 million less than ten years ago.
That works out to a loss of over two thirds of Premium subscribers.
The graph below plots DStv Premium subscribers from March 2013 to March 2018 and estimates their numbers up to March 2024.
