Goodbye, Showmax

When Showmax went live on 19 August 2015, it carried more than just a catalogue of TV series and films. It carried Naspers’s conviction that South Africa could build a globally competitive streaming service from Johannesburg, beat Netflix to its own market and use local content as the wedge to keep it there. Today that conviction will be quietly switched off.

The Canal+ trading update issued on Tuesday confirmed what subscribers already knew: the Showmax service in Africa will be phased out at the end of April. The numbers buried in the small print make for grim reading. Showmax revenue fell from €12-million in the first quarter of 2025 to €9-million in the first quarter of 2026 – a 25% slide in a single year, on a platform that was supposed to be in full-throated growth mode.

It is hard to overstate how different the world looked when Showmax launched. Netflix would not arrive in South Africa for another five months. Locally, Times Media’s Vidi and Altech’s Node were the closest thing the country had to a streaming proposition, and both were struggling. ShowMax – then capitalised in both syllables – arrived with 11 000 hours of content, a seven-day free trial and a flat R99/month fee for unlimited access.

It was, even then, a Netflix pre-emption play. Naspers had seen Reed Hastings signal a 200-country expansion in January 2015 and decided it would not cede home turf without a fight. Showmax was deliberately incubated outside MultiChoice, under former DStv Digital Media chief John Kotsaftis, to foster startup-style innovation. “We think our content selection is broader,” Kotsaftis told TechCentral on launch day. “Our local content selection is an order of magnitude bigger than anything Netflix has done elsewhere in the world.”

High-water mark

For a while, that was true. Tali’s Wedding Diary, the mockumentary starring Suzelle DIY‘s Julia Anastasopoulos, became the platform’s first breakout local hit. The excellent The Girl from St Agnes followed in 2019 as Showmax’s first scripted drama. By the end of its first year, the service had logged 10 million views, refreshed its logo into a more confident lower-case wordmark and was being projected to break even in 2021 at 800 000 subscribers, according to Morgan Stanley. It was modest, but it was real.

It was also, in retrospect, a high-water mark. Kotsaftis left for Fox Networks in 2018. The standalone unit was folded back into MultiChoice. The product began chasing what DStv had always relied on: sport. Showmax Pro launched in 2020 at R449/month, bundling SuperSport-fed Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and PSL games with the existing entertainment library. The base tier remained at R99. The maths was stretched but plausible.

Read: Commission to probe Showmax closure

What followed broke the formula. In March 2023, MultiChoice handed 30% of Showmax to Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Sky in exchange for Peacock’s streaming technology and a content pipeline from HBO, Warner Bros, Sony and others. The platform was rebuilt from the ground up.

Showmax 2.0 launched in February 2024 across 44 African markets with a new app, new branding and a three-tier pricing structure. Former MultiChoice executive Yolisa Phahle reportedly projected US$1-billion in annual revenue and 16 million subscribers within five years.

Neither came. Showmax recorded trading losses of R2.6-billion in the year ended 31 March 2024. They ballooned 88% to R4.9-billion the following year, dragging MultiChoice Group’s trading profit down 49% to R4-billion. Subscriber growth was “well short” of targets, by management’s own admission.

When Canal+ took control of MultiChoice in September 2025, the verdict was swift. In January, group CEO Maxime Saada called Showmax “not a commercial success”. In February, MultiChoice CEO David Mignot told TechCentral the platform “can’t continue”. “Financially speaking, business-wise speaking, the thing is not flying,” he said. The 5 March announcement that Showmax would be discontinued was a formality. Canal+’s 2025 results, days later, branded the platform an “expensive failure”.

Subscribers were given 30 April as a hard kill date. A selection of Showmax Originals will move to a dedicated section on DStv Stream from 1 May, though the international content from HBO, Warner Bros, Paramount and Peacock that anchored the 2024 relaunch will not survive the transition. Showmax-only subscribers have been offered DStv Stream Compact at a discounted R99/month for 12 months.

What is being lost is not really the platform itself. The Showmax Originals will be migrated. The international content will resurface, eventually, on the Canal+ app that is the centrepiece of Saada’s “one Canal+, one brand” strategy. Subscribers who want sport and entertainment in one place will land on DStv Stream and probably not look back.

Read: Showmax Originals find a new home on DStv Stream

What is being lost is the idea. Showmax in 2015 was the first serious attempt by a South African company to build a streaming service that could stand on its own against the global giants – not as a regional reseller, not as a niche play, but as a homegrown product that understood its market better than any imported alternative could. It nearly worked. Then it tried to become something bigger, raised the stakes, swung wildly – and lost.  – © 2026 NewsCentral Media