MultiChoice’s CEO discussed a potential merger with Canal+, a French media company, which could amount to $3 billion. This collaboration aims to enhance MultiChoice’s competitiveness against global streaming giants like Netflix. The merger plans to combine MultiChoice’s presence in English-speaking African countries with Canal+’s influence in French-speaking regions, creating a broader market reach. This strategic move is expected to improve content negotiation and revenue generation due to the increased scale.
The proposed merger, classified as a “large merger” under South African competition law, is subject to approval from the Competition Tribunal, following MultiChoice’s acceptance of Vivendi’s offer in June. Netflix currently has about 1.8 million subscribers in Africa, while MultiChoice’s Showmax boasts approximately 2.1 million subscribers. Forecasts from Digital TV Research project Netflix leading the African streaming market with 6.9 million subscribers by 2029, with Showmax following closely at 3.7 million.
To strengthen Showmax, MultiChoice collaborated with Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Sky last year, introducing live Premier League coverage. However, MultiChoice faced challenges in Nigeria, reporting a loss of 243,000 subscribers in the country due to high inflation impacting household budgets.