MultiChoice Africa Holdings B.V (MAH) is leaving Malawi. The departure stems from a high court ruling that prevents the company from raising DStv service prices in the country.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA | NOW THEN DIGITAL — MultiChoice Africa Holdings B.V (MAH) is exiting Malawi. The move comes as a result of a high court ruling that prevents the company from implementing further price increases for its DStv service in the country.
Pan-African broadcaster Multichoice is discontinuing its DStv satellite television service in Malawi. This decision follows the rejection of DStv’s price increases by Malawian regulators.
In late July, the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) obtained an interim injunction from the High Court, which barred Multichoice Malawi from altering DStv tariffs. On August 8, the high court ordered Multichoice to comply, prompting the broadcaster to terminate DStv services in Malawi.
MACRA’s injunction is based on the notion that Multichoice, not being a direct provider of the DStv service, lacks the authority to set or modify tariffs in the country. Multichoice believes this court order renders business unfeasible. The potential penalty of imprisonment for company staff for non-compliance contributed to the decision to exit the market.
“Given the impact on Multichoice Malawi and an increasingly adverse regulatory environment, [Multichoice] is therefore left with no option but to terminate DStv services indefinitely,” the company stated.
Effective immediately, customers are urged to stop DStv payments. Those who have already paid for new subscriptions will maintain their services until the current 30-day viewing cycle ends on or before September 10, 2023.
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Starting from August 9, 2023, no new subscriptions or reconnections will be processed.
In Multichoice’s annual results for the year ending March 31, 2023, DStv’s “Rest of Africa” market segment, excluding South Africa, achieved profitability for the first time since the company’s 2019 listing.
CEO Calvo Mawela said, “We continued to scale our overall subscriber base and benefited from a strong performance in the Rest of Africa, that delivered a trading profit for the first time since our listing in 2019.”
“We continued to scale our overall subscriber base and benefited from a strong performance in the Rest of Africa, that delivered a trading profit for the first time since our listing in 2019,” stated CEO Calvo Mawela.
With DStv’s growth in South Africa slowing in recent years, Multichoice is turning to the RoA segment to offset this decline. Omdia, a data firm, forecasts a modest pay TV subscriber growth of 5.1% for MultiChoice in South Africa from 2022 to 2027, impacted by the current energy crisis.
In contrast, the RoA segment is expected to contribute an increasing portion of MultiChoice’s total pay TV subscriptions, projected to rise from 53.6% in 2022 to 56.4% by 2027.
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