With Africa one of the biggest untapped markets for streaming and predictions of exponential growth in subscribers over the next five years, international and local companies are focusing their strategies to cater for the particular demands of African audiences and finding ways to overcome some of the challenges the continent presents.
We spoke to Reemah Sakaan, CEO of Britbox International, and Yolisa Phahle, CEO of General Entertainment and Connected Video at MultiChoice, to find out how the new kid on the streaming block and the continent’s market leader are looking to the future and what they’ve learnt from their different experiences.
Britbox
BBC/ITV’s streaming service Britbox celebrated its first birthday in SA earlier in 2022. While the service hasn’t made any subscriber numbers public, it’s estimated that its global subscription base sits at just more than 2-million. Sakaan says the service’s first year has been “a huge adventure and learning experience and we’ve refined what we’d previously researched. We’ve been delighted with the progress of Britbox. You’ll have seen the content supply and quality and freshness of content that we’ve been able to bring and adapt to what we see South African audiences really flocking to. We’ve seen amazing subscriber engagement with Britbox in SA.”
With less experience in the local streaming arena, much of Britbox’s first year focus has also been on getting down to basics in an unfamiliar market. As Sakaan points out, Britbox is “brand new and so getting people to know about us and hear about us [is still important]. Fortunately we think what we do and say is very clear and we do what we say on the tin.”
Britbox’s first year has shown that in SA, “scripted [content] sits at the heart of what really fuels the streaming service. Drama and comedy drama do particularly well,” says Sakaan. She also notes that period drama continues to be a strong draw for viewers and that the platform’s reality, factual and entertainment formats have also been well received. Current event focused programming on events taking place in the UK — such as Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee and recent funeral and the live streaming of the Bafta ceremony this year have given audiences “a pipe over to the UK in terms of what’s going on in British popular culture”.
Sakaan assures Britbox subscribers that the platform has plenty to offer in the coming months and that it’s committed to an offering that gives subscribers “real light and shade in terms of tones — alongside what I would call probably one of the best content line-ups that we have anywhere in the world”.
Showmax
For Phahle the challenges facing Showmax, the company’s streaming platform, are different to those faced by more recent entrants into the market.
With its decades of experience in television in SA and across the continent, Showmax has strong brand recognition and a better idea of the needs and specific challenges facing streaming platforms on the continent than competitors who are still feeling their way.
As the service celebrates its seventh year, Phahle says: “We have been here for a long time, but I also do think that we have made mistakes in the past and we have learnt lessons and we’re actually trying very hard to share those lessons as a group.”
Unlike the US and Europe where pay-TV is being replaced by streaming, Phahle believes that in Africa, “Because access to data is still not all pervasive, and because fibre is not in anywhere near the number of homes it is in other places in the world, pay-TV is still growing at the same time [and so] we’re able to get in there and run these two parallel businesses.”
She sees the arrival of competitors such as Netflix, Disney + and Britbox as “a vote of confidence in the African market. Because nobody would actually take the time and money to launch their products and services if there wasn’t a real chance of significant growth. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for everybody. And I think what we’ve done is basically realise what are our strengths.”
One of those strengths is Showmax’s ability to produce content made by African content creators in African languages for markets across the continent. “In every market where we’ve made bespoke local content for Showmax, that content has really driven acquisitions and retention. I always say that our audiences, whether they’re in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, SA, they’re no different to audiences anywhere in the world ... Essentially they predominantly prefer to watch their television ... in their own language. So Africa is the same You have to give them great content because we watch a lot of television in Africa, almost twice the global average.”
Though MultiChoice has not released the latest subscriber numbers for Showmax, the company reported in June that the service has enjoyed a 68% year-on-year increase in paying subscriber numbers. Phahle believes that this will continue to grow and that new strategies put in place by Showmax to broaden its subscriber base to users who have internet access obstacles as well as new lower pricing of the platform’s Showmax Pro package — which includes access to MultiChoice’s sports coverage — ahead of the Fifa World Cup, will help to attract new subscribers. “On our platform you can stream up to three times more than you can on anybody else’s platform.”
She also believes that Showmax’s strong growth will continue because MultiChoice understands that “what we’re doing is something very different to what everybody else is doing and we really understand how people live, how people pay and the languages that people prefer to consume their entertainment”.
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