From Africa’s #1 streaming platform to “expensive failure” in 11 years
Showmax launched in 2015. It cracked Kenya with M-Pesa integration before anyone else. It hit 3.9M subscribers. It posted 44% year-on-year growth at its peak. For a few years, it genuinely looked like Africa’s answer to Netflix.
Then the math caught up. Growth without profitability is a fundraising strategy, not a business. Canal+ spent $3B acquiring MultiChoice and inherited the obligation to make Showmax work. What it found was a platform losing $297M in FY2025 alone, generating $48.5M in revenue against a $1B target. Canal+ called it exactly what it was: an “expensive failure.”
The announcement came March 5, 2026. New subscriptions closed March 31. The platform went dark April 30, 2026. Cumulative losses reached $429M — and that number doesn’t include the $309M in equity that NBCUniversal and MultiChoice had already poured in, or the $410M in Peacock tech licensing that Canal+ is now racing to exit. Eleven years. 82 originals in the final year. All gone.
The figures come in rand, euros, and dollars, which makes them easy to misread. Here is the reconciliation:
Revenue grew 22% to R1.0B in FY2024. But losses grew 88% in the same period. The platform was losing $2.50 for every $1 it earned. The Peacock technology rebuild, announced as a turnaround play in 2024, did nothing to fix the unit economics. It just added $410M in licensing exposure on top of operating losses that were already terminal.
Canal+’s threshold for tolerance was apparently somewhere around two years of ownership. They hit it in early 2026.
The 2024 relaunch on NBCUniversal’s Peacock tech stack was the last real bet. The logic was defensible: replace aging MultiChoice infrastructure with proven streaming technology, access Peacock content, signal premium positioning. The licensing deal ran 7 years and cost $410M.
The technology worked. The market didn’t. African subscribers were not paying R399/month for a better app. They were not paying R399/month at all — not at scale, not on a continent where 3.92% of the population has a credit card. Peacock fixed the product. It could not fix the purchasing power problem or the competitive pressure from piracy.
Canal+ is now in the uncomfortable position of negotiating an early exit from a 7-year licensing contract it inherited with the MultiChoice acquisition. Whatever that costs, it comes on top of the $429M already written off.
The official line is that subscribers “migrate” to DStv Stream. The offer: free Compact tier access from April 1 to May 31, 2026, then R99/month for 12 months — a 75% discount from the standard R399. Canal+ is targeting 60–70% conversion.
The migration is opt-in, not automatic. That distinction matters. Passive subscribers — the ones who forgot they subscribed, or only kept the account for a specific show — will churn without ever touching the DStv Stream interface.
The context for this makes the target harder: DStv Kenya collapsed from 1.19M to 188K subscribers in recent years, an 84% decline. DStv Stream revenue grew 48% in FY2025, but Canal+ has never disclosed DStv Stream subscriber counts. The revenue growth may be pricing, not subscribers. Until Canal+ breaks out those numbers, 60–70% is a target, not a forecast.
The MultiChoice acquisition closed with a merger valued at R55B and R30B in public interest commitments over three years. The Competition Tribunal approved it July 22, 2025. Six months later, it became a different kind of story.
A post-takeover investigation was announced March 17, 2026 — 12 days after the Showmax closure announcement. Parliament oversight visits followed March 31 and April 1. The EFF had requested the investigation. COMESA issued its own notice. The political calendar is not flattering for Canal+.
Three scenarios are plausible: no breach found (60% probability) — the closure is painful but probably legal under the merger conditions; conditional remedies (30%) — Canal+ faces accelerated content spend or local production quotas; structural remedies (10%) — divestment of assets or canal+ access requirements that Canal+ would resist vigorously. The investigation timeline likely runs through late 2026.
The casualty that gets the least attention is the production industry. Content spend fell from R8.6B to R8.1B, a 5.8% cut. Production hours dropped 18%, from 6,502 to 5,340. Tshedza, Seriti, Idea Candy — the independent studios that built their business models around Showmax commissions — are now pivoting to DStv Stream with no guarantee of the same volume.
The broader context is hostile. Amazon Prime Video retreated from Sub-Saharan African originals in January 2024. Apple TV+ uses South Africa as a production hub, not as a commissioning market — South African crews and infrastructure serve global projects, but the intellectual property and storytelling control stays in Cupertino. Netflix remains, but has never compensated for the gap left by the platforms that exited.
The 82 Showmax originals from FY2025 represent a high-water mark. Under Canal+ rationalization, expect 40–50 original titles in the first year of DStv Stream as the primary vehicle. Some of those will be rebranded Showmax content that already exists. New commissions will be slower to arrive.
Scenario A: DStv Stream absorbs the wreckage (60%). Canal+ hits its 60–70% conversion target. The myCanal app rolls out in English-speaking Africa by Q4 2026. The brand becomes Canal+ across the continent, DStv is rationalized as a legacy product, and the African streaming market has one dominant SVOD player instead of two. Netflix remains a premium-tier competitor. The rest of the market fragments.
Scenario B: Netflix makes a sports play (20%). The EPL Africa rights come up for bid in August 2026. If Netflix bids aggressively and wins, it enters the mass market in a way it has resisted for years. DStv Stream loses its most defensible asset. Canal+ is then competing on content quality against a competitor with a $17B content budget.
Scenario C: Fragmentation and piracy surge (20%). Conversion rates disappoint. The R99/month offer ends after 12 months, and the price reverts toward R399. A significant portion of former Showmax subscribers don’t convert to any paid service — they go to IPTV piracy, which is already structurally embedded in South Africa and growing fast in Nigeria and Kenya.
The signals to watch: Canal+ brand announcement for English-speaking Africa by June 2026, Netflix EPL Africa bid result by August 2026, IPTV piracy metrics in Q3 2026.
April 30, 2026. New subscriptions were halted March 31. Canal+ announced the closure March 5, 2026, citing cumulative losses of $429M and FY2025 trading losses of $297M against revenue of just $48.5M.
$429M in cumulative losses — $297M in FY2025 alone. Revenue of $48.5M against a $1B target. Canal+ called it an “expensive failure.” After acquiring MultiChoice for $3B and spending $410M on Peacock tech licensing, the math never worked.
Migrated to DStv Stream. Free trial April 1 to May 31, 2026 on the Compact tier, then R99/month for 12 months (a 75% discount from the standard R399). Migration is opt-in, not automatic. Canal+ targets 60–70% conversion.
Rebranded and distributed via DStv linear channels — Africa Magic, M-Net, kykNET, Mzansi Magic — and available on DStv Stream. The originals pipeline is expected to narrow from 82 titles in FY2025 to 40–50 under Canal+ rationalization.
Yes. The Canal+ app (myCanal) will roll out in English-speaking Africa in late 2026. It is already live in Francophone markets. The brand transition from Showmax to Canal+ is the strategic endpoint of the MultiChoice acquisition.
Full post-mortem of the African SVOD graveyard — $601M+ in losses across iROKOtv, Netflix, and Showmax — in the report.
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