- Canal+ has a announced a €100 million growth plan to revive MultiChoice amid subscriber decline
- The French media plans to hire 1,000+ sales staff across Africa to drive subscriber growth
- MultiChoice had shut down in 2025 with 14.4 million subscribers, down from 14.9 million the previous year citing currency devaluation in Nigeria, power cuts, Showmax failure, and content inflation
French media giant Canal+ has announced a €100 million plan to revive growth at African pay-TV operator MultiChoice Group, the company behind DStv and GOtv.
Canal+, which completed its acquisition of MultiChoice late last year, revealed the lifeline in its 2025 financial results released on Wednesday, March 11.
According to the report, MultiChoice experienced a significant decline in both subscribers and revenue in 2025, largely due to challenging operating environments in key markets, including Nigeria.
The company ended 2025 with 14.4 million subscribers, down from 14.9 million a year earlier.
Revenue also dropped 6% to €2.4 billion, while adjusted earnings before interest and tax fell 14% to €159 million.
“After experiencing impressive growth from 2010 to 2023, MultiChoice has faced challenges since the combined effects of macro-economic factors (e.g., currency devaluation in Nigeria, power cuts), a difficult transition to OTT with the expensive failure of Showmax, and strong inflation across most cost items, especially content, negatively impacted its profitability,” the company stated.
The report noted that short-term measures, including reducing subscriber acquisition subsidies and increasing prices, had been implemented to address the situation.
However, these actions negatively impacted the subscriber base, compounding existing profitability issues.
“MultiChoice is facing a €140 million negative impact in 2026 from inertia of subscriber base driving decrease in revenues, and from cost inflation. To restart subscriber growth, CANAL+ will launch a growth boost plan by investing around €100 million,” the company said.
As part of this growth push, Canal+ intends to hire more than 1,000 sales staff across African markets, shifting MultiChoice towards a more sales-driven approach to attract new subscribers.
This development follows Canal+’s full acquisition of MultiChoice, a deal valued at about $3 billion and finalized in September last year, significantly expanding the French broadcaster’s global pay-TV presence.
The combined group now serves over 40 million subscribers across nearly 70 countries spanning Africa, Europe, and Asia, employing roughly 17,000 people.
Canal+ also indicated that it would outline a detailed integration strategy, including operational synergies and growth plans, during a strategic update scheduled for the first quarter of 2026.
TheRadar earlier reported that Canal+ plans to discontinue Showmax, the streaming platform previously operated by MultiChoice, as part of broader cost-cutting measures.
Launched in August 2015 as a pan-African streaming service to compete with Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, Showmax struggled to achieve profitability. In MultiChoice’s last financial results before the Canal+ takeover, trading losses from the platform had expanded by 88%, while revenue from the service declined.