How Canal+ will turn around battling MultiChoice

Canal+ will pump nearly R2 billion (€100 million) during 2026 into a plan to restart subscriber growth at newly acquired MultiChoice, following more than three years of declines.

CEO of the French pay-TV operator Maxime Saada admits that stemming subscriber losses in its English- and Portuguese-speaking markets will be a big ask, as the business has been losing an average of 1.6 million subscribers a year.

The €100 million “boost” plan will be funded through an acceleration of its “synergies” plan where it expects €150 million (R2.8 billion) in cost reductions this year.

Read: Inside Canal+’s plan to cut billions in costs at MultiChoice

It now expects that number to increase to €250 million (R4.8 billion), despite it only taking control of the Randburg-based business “less than six months ago”.

Much of these additional savings have come from its decision to shut the loss-making Showmax business – “a severely loss-making activity” says Saada, “on which we saw no recovery, no matter what was done”.

Read:
MultiChoice to end loss-making Showmax platform
Billions wasted, well over R10bn in trading losses – how Showmax failed

Its early interventions, including slashing the price of decoders (via subsidies) towards the end of 2025, has already had “some effect” according to Saada.

At the end of December, MultiChoice had 14.37 million subscribers, a marginal 0.9% decline from the 14.5 million at the end of April (the last time it reported results as a JSE-listed entity).

Canal+ still expects a “modest decrease” in the number of MultiChoice subscribers this year, but that revenue will decline at a slower rate before it gets “back to growth”.

Central to its plan is to return MultiChoice to a level of “commercial power” that it had just three years ago.

As part of the investment, it will hire an additional 1 000 salespeople “on the ground” across these markets which it acquired. These costs will be variable as the new hires will be commission-focused.

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This is important as Saada says the group already believes “there is an issue of structural high costs at MultiChoice, so the idea is not to add a fixed cost. The idea is to lower fixed costs [in the business]”.

Saada says the team is “super confident” of its ability to turn the business around as it has delivered a similar result in its home market, France.

“We know how to do this. The dynamics are very strong. The market is very strong. And David [Mignot, CEO of the combined Canal+ Africa] needs to rebuild what he has built already in French speaking Africa with the retailers, and we know how to do this”.

Simple, focused

Mignot says the turnaround plan, which is built on four pillars, is “nothing revolutionary” but that there is “a lot of work to do”.

The first three are: a focus on content, simplifying its offer to customers, and building out a powerful subscriber acquisition engine.

Content would be a natural focus for the group which, following the acquisition, now produces roughly 10 000 hours of content annually across the continent, in 20 to 25 languages.

Mignot says its combined scale now makes negotiating broader agreements easier than either party would’ve been able to achieve individually.

It will also share content and rights, where this makes sense, to “provide the best content offer on the continent”.

Second, the packaging of its product in the various markets needs to be simplified and Canal+ will make these propositions “as appealing as possible”.

“That means clear and simple commercial offers and branding, and of course improving and intensifying our marketing,” says Mignot.

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Read: Canal+ mulls rollout of streaming app for MultiChoice clients

Closely related to this is the third pillar which is the increased focus on new subscribers. “With the best content and simple, appealing commercial offers, our acquisition engine can and will be far more effective,” says Mignot.

“In fact, we are going to shift the focus of our business much more towards sales.”

As part of this, it will broaden its distribution network and lower the entry cost.

Mignot says these three pillars are what the group “will do”, based on its extensive experience in multiple markets. “We know from our experience how effective they will be together, but we also know this only works when it is underpinned by operational excellence.”

This fourth pillar will see the implementation of its standard operating model and best practices across all markets and the synergies it’ll attain from its scale.

While it recruits the additional 1 000 sales-focused positions, Canal+ will also initiate a voluntary severance plan at “support functions” within MultiChoice.

It will also restructure Irdeto, MultiChoice’s cybersecurity and digital rights management (DRM) subsidiary.

It says these “planned changes are consistent with the commitments Canal+ made during the acquisition of MultiChoice and align with the ambition of Canal+ to streamline certain functions while investing more in activities that directly support the group’s growth and business development”.

Read:

New Canal+ data shows MultiChoice subscriber losses accelerated ahead of takeover
Cracks start appearing in DStv’s last stronghold … sport
Canal+ aims to be a top five entertainment firm with Africa bet

As part of the Competition Tribunal’s approval of the “merger”, Canal+ faces a three-year moratorium “on any merger-specific retrenchments”.

The group, which already trades on the London Stock Exchange, will complete a secondary listing on the JSE before the end of June. This was a further condition placed on the transaction by competition authorities.

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