Canal+ Now Runs DStv: Is the Takeover Good or Bad for South Africa?

DStv has a new boss, and for the first time in its history, that boss sits in Paris, not Randburg. French media group Canal+ built practical control of MultiChoice, the Johannesburg-headquartered company behind DStv, GOtv and SuperSport, when its mandatory offer went unconditional back in 2025. MultiChoice's shares were then compulsorily bought out and delisted from the JSE and A2X in December 2025, and on 10 July 2026 Canal+ confirmed the compulsory acquisition process had concluded, ending the remaining minority shareholdings and folding MultiChoice fully into the French group after nearly two years of regulatory wrangling.

The deal is one of the largest media transactions the continent has seen. Canal+ valued MultiChoice at roughly R55 billion, or R125 a share, and having already built up a 45% stake through open-market buying, it paid around R35 billion to mop up the rest. The combined group now claims more than 40 million subscribers across 70 countries, stitching together DStv, GOtv and the DStv Stream streaming app in Africa with Canal+'s pay-TV and streaming business in Europe and francophone Africa. On paper, it is a genuine global media power, something South African television has never really had a stake in before.

Whether that is good news for the people actually paying the DStv bill each month is a different question, and the answer so far is mixed, leaning uneasy.

The case for optimism

Start with the numbers Canal+ wants you to see. Across MultiChoice's markets, new subscriber sign-ups grew 40% in June 2026 compared with the same month in 2025, the group's best month for new business in a decade, with South Africa singled out as a standout performer. And after years of near-automatic annual increases, MultiChoice Group chief executive David Mignot confirmed there will be no DStv price hike in South Africa in 2026. "I want to give a clear answer, because we are building subscribers, so it's not the right time to increase pricing," he said. That is a real, tangible change for households who had grown used to opening their statement each April and finding a bigger number, even if MultiChoice itself is careful to frame it as a one-year measure rather than a permanent change of heart.

There is also substance behind the regulatory approval that let this deal close. South Africa's Competition Tribunal signed off with conditions attached, and they are not token gestures. Canal+ and MultiChoice committed roughly R30 billion to keeping MultiChoice's head office in South Africa, continuing to fund local content and live sport, and supporting the local creative sector. There is a three-year moratorium on retrenchments tied to the merger itself. And to satisfy ownership requirements, the local broadcasting licence now sits with a separate entity, LicenceCo, majority-owned by historically disadvantaged groups including Phuthuma Nathi, the Identity Partners Itai Consortium, the Afrifund Consortium and a workers' trust, with MultiChoice retaining a 49% economic interest and 20% of the voting rights. The Black Business Council has publicly backed the merger, saying that "with Canal+ being a global player, this merger opens up opportunities for our local content creators and actors," on the strength of that funding commitment.

The case for worry

Set against that is a harder set of facts, starting with the most visible one: Showmax no longer exists. MultiChoice's streaming service shut down permanently on 30 April 2026, with its library folded into DStv Stream, after Canal+ cited heavy, unsustainable losses. In its own results commentary, Canal+ blamed the group's subscriber slide on load shedding, a weaker naira, broader inflation across its African markets, the difficult transition to OTT, and what it called the "expensive failure" of Showmax. MultiChoice's subscriber base, in the group's own reporting, fell from 14.9 million in 2024 to 14.4 million in 2025, a loss of around 500,000 customers, dragging revenue down 6% to €2.4 billion and adjusted operating profit down 14%. Cost cutting and price increases elsewhere on the continent then made those losses worse, not better, before the 2026 South African price freeze arrived.

That cost-cutting drive is the part South African production houses are feeling directly. Canal+ has set a target of saving €400 million a year at DStv by 2030, with €250 million of cost synergies expected in 2026 alone. Suppliers have reportedly been asked to cut their invoices by 20%, and, according to South African broadcast critic Thinus Ferreira, contracts for local shows are "simply piling up" at Canal+'s Paris headquarters awaiting sign-off, with no word on whether they will be renewed or at what price. He has described the mood inside the industry as "chaos, and growing chaos". The three-year retrenchment moratorium covers MultiChoice's own staff; it does not cover the freelancers, production houses and actors who depend on commissioned local content, and they are the ones left waiting on an answer from Paris.

SuperSport, long the crown jewel of the DStv bouquet, has also lost something less visible but arguably more important: control. Decisions on which sports rights to buy have moved to Canal+'s Paris head office, leaving South Africa's own sports broadcaster without the final say over what it acquires. For the first time in years, DStv subscribers had no viewing rights to the 2026 Winter Olympics, which Ferreira attributes directly to a Paris decision not to buy them, alongside a similar pass on the World Darts Championship. Nqobile Ndlovu, a sports business researcher at Cash N Sport, warns that a European-run rights strategy, built around euro and dollar bidding, sits awkwardly with a business whose subscriber revenue is earned in rand, naira and other African currencies that keep losing value against both.

Then there is the legal overhang nobody planned for. South Africa's Competition Commission has referred MultiChoice and set-top box supplier Altech UEC to the Competition Tribunal over an alleged 2014 agreement to keep Altech out of the pay-TV market MultiChoice operates in. Regulators are seeking penalties of up to 10% of annual turnover, which analysts put at roughly $244 million, or around R4.5 billion, if the Tribunal rules against the companies. It is an awkward case to be fighting just as the new owner is telling investors how much it plans to save.

So, positive or negative?

Honestly assessed, this is not yet a story with a happy ending, nor a catastrophic one. The price freeze and the record sign-up month are real and worth acknowledging. So is the R30 billion commitment that bought South Africa a seat at the table rather than being reduced to a branch office. But the direction of travel on decision-making is unmistakable: acquisitions, sports rights and increasingly the fate of local shows are being decided in Paris, by a company openly chasing hundreds of millions of euros in savings. For the production houses and freelancers waiting on contracts stuck in someone else's inbox, and for a sports broadcaster that no longer chooses what it buys, the takeover has already cost real ground, whatever the subscriber charts say next quarter.

The fairest verdict for now is cautious and a little sceptical. Canal+ has bought itself three years of goodwill through the retrenchment moratorium and the local content funding pledge, and it has a real incentive to make good on both, given how loudly it has promised them to regulators. Whether that promise survives contact with a €400 million savings target is the question South African viewers, and South African creatives, will be watching most closely over the next few years.

Sources: Moneyweb, TechTrends Kenya, News24, BusinessTech, BusinessTech, TechCentral, Legit.ng, News24/City Press, EWN, EWN, Cape Town ETC, Broadcast Media Africa.