DStv Premium is excellent value for money, MultiChoice South Africa CEO Calvo Mawela has told MyBroadband.

His statement follows MultiChoice reporting a decline in the number of DStv Premium subscribers in South Africa during its past financial year. The losses were attributed to competition from online services like Netflix.

DStv’s subscriber base is growing overall, however, and it is adding subscribers at the bottom of the market on packages like DStv Access – which is R99 per month.

This is compared to Netflix packages, which range in price from $7.99 (R100) to $11.99 (R150) in South Africa.

Too expensive?

With DStv losing Premium subscribers, and services like Netflix growing its user base, this raises the question: Is DStv Premium too expensive?

“I don’t think we are expensive in terms of the full entertainment package that we give,” said Mawela.

“If you are a family of four or five and you walk into a movie theatre – how much do you pay?”

Tickets for a 2D movie at Ster-Kinekor range between R31 and R77. A family of four is looking at a minimum of R124 and a maximum of R308 for tickets to a single 2D movie.

“You see, it’s good value for money in terms of the entertainment that you get,” said Mawela.

“You go to Dubai, the UK, whatever, and you’ll see how expensive sport is and how it is fragmented.”

SuperSport

Mawela explained that in the United Kingdom, pay-TV subscribers can’t get all the English Premier League matches which are broadcast on SuperSport.

In the UK, you can only watch around 170 matches and they are spread across two operators: Sky and BT.

SuperSport has more than double the amount of matches, all in one package.

When asked why SuperSport has all the broadcasting rights when UK broadcasters don’t, MultiChoice said one reason is the regulations.

There is a regulation in the UK which places restrictions on broadcasting football matches to encourage people to watch the games at the stadiums.

The primary factor, however, is the licensing fee SuperSport pays. “Frankly, it’s because we pay a lot of money,” said MultiChoice.

Although DStv lost thousands of Premium subscribers last year, Mawela said they are not looking at changing their package structures.

They are also not considering pay-per-view sports fees or the ability to customise your package and choose your own channels.

Mawela said it still makes the most business sense for DStv to package channels, and they don’t see the service moving away from this model.

The current model allows DStv to offer customers the best selection of content at an attractive price, said Mawela.

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