Multichoice / Canal+
The future giant of African pay TV?

Maxime Saada, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Canal+ Group, confirmed on September 14th at a group's press conference that Bollore’s subsidiary has increased its stake in the capital of Multichoice, the leading South African pay TV operator in Africa, to reach 26.26% of the capital. The French group first took a 6.5% stake in Multichoice in October 2020 before increasing its stake to 15% in the summer of 2021 and then continuing to buy shares on the market. Although the two companies are still managed independently, their operational merger would create an undisputed leader in the field of pay TV in Africa, leaving the Chinese operator Star Times far behind. The strong complementarity of their locations could also avoid any risk of cannibalization. This operation falls within Canal+ Group's internationalisation strategy, which is one of the three pillars initiated by Vivendi in 2016 to support the transformation of its model: to move "from a French group to a global group, from a French content creator to an international creator of European essence, from a linear television channel to a key digital player". Canal+, leader of the Francophone Africa pay TV market  The group’s growth outside France is led by Canal+ International subsidiary, which counted more than 14.3 million subscribers at the end of June 2022, spread in more than 40 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. Sub-Saharan Africa, where Canal+ is present in more than 25 countries, is now the main market in terms of subscriptions, after mainland France. With 6.6 million subscribers at the end of June 2022, the Canal+ Group is the undisputed pay TV leader in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa. The continent now represents 27.6% of the total Canal+ subscriber base, compared to 24.3% for Europe and 40.1% for mainland France. However, the French Group remains second to Multichoice in Africa Despite its strong presence in Francophone Africa, Canal+ is still a long way from the South African leader Multichoice on a regional scale, since the latter counts more than 21 million pay TV subscribers, more than three times as many as the French company. At the end of Q2 2022, Multichoice represented around half of total pay TV subscribers in the region while the Vivendi-owned operator had captured 15%. The sub-saharan TV market has been characterised for years by the relative strength of pay TV offers, which bring content to audiences otherwise bound to rely on state-owned FTA channels or on the few private TV stations, which many times launched in the wake of the transition to digital terrestrial television. In this context, international actors have grown to quasi-monopolistic levels, as illustrated by the overwhelming dominance of Canal+ and Multichoice...