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I realize I've sent a few reports back-to-back on the Showmax shutdown and Canal+'s acquisition of MultiChoice, but it's an evolving situation with plenty still to unpack as I learn more. My intent is not to overwhelm your inboxes on this topic — only to share the most interesting insights in real time. I've been closely following the South African press for obvious reasons, especially the financial media and their number-crunching of the Showmax debacle. Among them, on Moneyweb, written by Hilton Tarrant, "Billions wasted, well over R10bn in trading losses – how Showmax failed." This time, I'm stripping the emotion out of the story and looking strictly at the financials and available data to understand why Canal+ pulled the plug, what MultiChoice was thinking with the Showmax relaunch, and what lessons can be drawn for any other platforms planning to enter the African streaming space with pan-African ambitions. Based on the company's own targets, its later disclosures, and the conditions it was operating in, the biggest misread looks like this: MultiChoice appears to have treated Africa as a large, underserved streaming market that could grow fast once it had better technology, more content from global studios, live sports, mobile-friendly pricing, flexible payment options, and lower data consumption. The thinking is plain in its May 2023 investor pitch: the company introduced a relaunch powered by Peacock — the technology platform built by Comcast/NBC Universal — projected subscriber numbers more than three times higher than its previous model, targeted $1 billion in annual revenue by 2028, and expected to stop losing money by 2027. These numbers are well documented. To its credit, MultiChoice did solve some key access problems for customers: mobile-only plans for people without televisions or home internet, broad payment options, very low data caps for areas with weak connectivity, the ability to download content for offline viewing, local-language programming, and access to the English Premier League. Those were genuine improvements, and the company leaned on its long history across African markets as a competitive advantage. The problems came after that. Again, the facts: Subscriber growth arrived. MultiChoice reported that active paying Showmax subscribers were up 44% year-on-year for the financial year ending March 31, 2025. Yet the service generated only R753 million (about $46 million) in revenue for the year, down from roughly R1 billion (just over $60 million) the year before. More people were subscribing, but the money coming in was falling. That combination suggests something went wrong with the relationship between subscriber numbers and actual income. Simply put, as an entrepreneur operating in the same space, albeit a different business, what matters is not just how many people sign up but how much they pay, how long they stay, and whether the total adds up to enough to cover costs. MultiChoice's reported results showed more subscribers, less revenue, increasingly higher losses. That usually happens when most of the new sign-ups came via cheaper promotional deals, sports-only or mobile-only packages that generate thinner income, or when customers were leaving quickly enough that the paying base never had time to build. The second likely misjudgment was underestimating how much currency weakness and economic pressure on African households would cut into the service's actual earnings. MultiChoice's broader business absorbed R5.2 billion (around $315 million) in losses due to foreign-currency movements during FY25. At the same time, the company acknowledged that the US dollar costs of technology and content licensing were rising as local exchange rates fell. The third likely misjudgment was believing that knowing the continent well was enough to offset the harsh economics of streaming. MultiChoice did have genuine local advantages. But global streaming economics are the same no matter the context: a platform spends heavily on original productions, technology, and marketing. If only a few million people subscribe as a result, the platform loses money. If tens of millions subscribe, the same infrastructure costs are spread across many more paying users, and the service can start making money. In plain terms, Canal+'s decision to shut down Showmax after taking control was an external, financially disciplined assessment of that reality. Canal+'s CEO Maxime Saada called the losses unsustainable.
