DStv Is Betting on a Different Streaming Model
Showmax may have disappeared as a standalone platform, but its closure could tell us more about DStv’s next move than another streaming launch would.
At the end of April, MultiChoice discontinued Showmax across its African markets after years of investment in African originals, international entertainment and sport. CANAL+,who acquired MultiChoice, stated the platform’s significant annual losses had become unsustainable. Showmax Originals have since moved into DStv Stream.
The decision is more than a platform closure. MultiChoice is reorganising how streaming fits within its wider entertainment business, bringing Showmax content into an ecosystem that already spans live television, local programming and sport through SuperSport.
From standalone streaming to aggregation
Showmax had many of the ingredients expected to give an African streaming platform an advantage. It invested heavily in African productions, had access to MultiChoice’s market knowledge and increasingly built its proposition around local entertainment and sport.
Audiences were responding and MultiChoice reported that Showmax’s paying subscriber base grew 44% year on year in its 2025 financial year, excluding discontinued services. Albeit, the growth was not enough to make the standalone business sustainable.
Moving selected originals into DStv Stream allows MultiChoice to approach the same content differently. Instead of maintaining another platform competing for a separate subscription, DStv can place on-demand entertainment alongside live television, local programming and sport through SuperSport.
There is a clear business logic behind the move. MultiChoice already has established distribution, content and customer relationships across African markets. Bringing more of that offer together gives the group an opportunity to make these existing strengths work harder within streaming.
Why the move makes sense
The proposition becomes particularly interesting in African markets, where affordability remains an important barrier to streaming adoption.
PwC, the global professional services firm, has highlighted the importance of mobile viewing and the pressure that connectivity and subscription costs can place on consumers. In South Africa, for example, 75% of users consume content through smartphones. For DStv, this creates an opportunity to build from a position it already occupies. Rather than competing purely on the size of its streaming catalogue, it can combine the things audiences already associate with the brand, particularly television, local entertainment and sport, with more flexible on-demand viewing.
Rather than following the Netflix model, DStv can shape its streaming offer around the audience, content and distribution network it has already built.
CANAL+ makes the bet bigger
The CANAL+ acquisition gives that strategy more scale.
The combined group brings together DStv, GOtv, SuperSport and MultiChoice’s content operations with CANAL+’s strong position across Francophone Africa. CANAL+ CEO Maxime Saada has also discussed expanding the CANAL+ app across African markets and developing a broader “super app” capable of aggregating different entertainment services, including DStv.
This makes Showmax’s integration potentially part of something larger. The opportunity is no longer limited to moving content from one platform to another, but to finding new ways of connecting content, sport, streaming and distribution across a much broader African entertainment footprint.
Whether aggregation proves more sustainable remains to be seen. Bringing more services together only creates value if the resulting offer remains simple, relevant and affordable for audiences. Still, the move opens a wider question for African streaming. Perhaps the next stage of competition will not be defined by how many new platforms enter the market, but by how creatively media businesses package and distribute entertainment around the audiences they already serve.
For DStv and CANAL+, closing Showmax is one move. Building a stronger entertainment model from its pieces is the bigger bet.
Sources :
Reuters — Canal+ unit MultiChoice ends streaming platform Showmax, citing losses, 5 March 2026.
MultiChoice Integrated Annual Report 2025 — Showmax subscriber growth, content investment and business performance.
DStv — Showmax Originals Have a New Home on DStv Stream, on the integration of selected Showmax content into DStv Stream.
PwC, Africa Entertainment & Media Outlook 2025–2029 — African streaming adoption, mobile consumption, affordability and connectivity.
Reuters — Broadcaster Canal+ becomes first French company to list in Johannesburg, 3 June 2026 — CANAL+ strategy following the MultiChoice acquisition and its wider streaming ambitions.
