Multichoice, the South African pay TV company is under pressure to change its subscription model, from offering fixed monthly prices to pay-as-you-view options.
This comes in the heels of the digital Pay TV company’s hike in the prices of its two satellite services, DSTV and GOTV by up to 14% earlier this year, drawing the ire of legislators who immediately demanded a downward review.
The Senate asked Multichoice to switch to pay-as-you-view so that consumers can “match their TV consumption to subscription as it is the case with electricity metering and mobile telephony.”
With an estimated 20 million subscribers, Multichoice is the leading African provider of satellite TV dominating Nigeria and South Africa due to its package of exclusive European soccer games and international TV stations.
The company also owns Showmax, a streaming video-on-demand service and producer of original content that is arguably Africa’s main rival to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other services from Hollywood, Yahoo news reports.
A three-member tribunal has been ordered by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to establish whether Multichoice already adopts pay-as-you-view in South Africa and other countries. If yes, the commission is to make sure Multichoice does the same in Nigeria.
The result of the inquiry could determine the future of the continent’s biggest entertainment company in one of its largest markets, potentially affecting the availability of massively-watched shows like Big Brother Naija currently airing its seventh season.
Multichoice has repeatedly said in the past that it cannot offer a pay-as-you-view model, citing technical and commercial considerations while insisting that its services are relatively affordable.
In 2020, John Ugbe, CEO for the company’s Nigeria operations, said:
“We are yet to see a pay-TV business anywhere in the world that does PAYG in the sense intended here. We do not believe the model is technically or commercially feasible”.