MultiChoice will overhaul the DStv line-up on 17 September, in the biggest reworking of its bouquets in nearly 15 years.
Access, Family and Compact disappear, replaced by Starter, Select and Sports. A new Movies & Series package sits below Premium, which stays at the top. Cricket, the UEFA Champions League and domestic rugby move out of Premium into the mid-priced Sports package.
Nothing gets more expensive, and existing subscribers shift across at the prices they pay today.
Interesting insights on new DStv packages
The centrepiece is Sports at R479 a month on satellite and R399 on Stream, which is what Compact costs now. It carries 17 sports channels plus everything in Select, including every PSL, Premier League and Champions League match, all cricket, the Currie Cup, SA Cup, Varsity Rugby, one URC match a week, cycling and the UFC. Cricket, local rugby and the Champions League were all Premium-only.
Movies & Series cost R500 on both platforms and take M-Net and kykNET out of Premium. Premium holds Springbok and international rugby, the rest of the URC, Formula 1, MotoGP, golf majors and tennis, and stays at R979, though MultiChoice will sell it at R799 on a 24-month contract.
Compact Plus has no successor: its subscribers move to Premium and are held at their current price for 12 months. LicenceCo chief executive Willington Ngwepe was unusually direct about why this took so long, saying customers have been asking for years and the company had not really responded to their cries.
What others are saying about new DStv packages
TechCentral, briefed under embargo, has the full pricing and Ngwepe's admission that the move is inherently risky because Premium subscribers are price-insensitive and stay only because it is the one package with everything they want. Its earlier reporting traced the overhaul taking shape. TechCentral also covered the channel cuts as Canal+ leans harder on sport following its acquisition of MultiChoice.
Unbundling the thing that held the bundle together
Ngwepe named the risk himself. Premium exists because it is the only way to get everything, and the people on it do not shop on price. Take cricket, local rugby and the Champions League out and put them at R479, and you have given your most valuable subscribers a reason to pay less.
He says he does not expect much downgrading and that average revenue per user should stay roughly flat, which is the bet the whole thing rests on. What makes it worth doing anyway is that the alternative was continuing to lose Premium subscribers to nothing. The 24-month contract at R799 is the tell: MultiChoice is buying retention with a discount rather than with content.
Watch the Compact Plus cohort, because a year from now those subscribers face a real Premium bill and a genuine choice, and that is when the numbers will say whether this worked.
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