New Multichoice owner, Canal+, has unveiled a R1.9 billion “boost plan” for the struggling South African group, which includes revisions to content, pricing structures and offering voluntary severance to certain employees.
Reporting its first set of results as the new Multichoice parent, Canal+ noted that it had emerged from a challenging period, tail-ended by the successful acquisition of the African media giant.
Canal+ took control of Multichoice in September 2025 following a lengthy acquisition process. The deal was valued at over R50 billion.
The resultant group is a 42 million subscriber media giant, pulling in R164 billion in revenue and EBITDA of over R20 billion (all reported in Euro equivalents).
While the overall group, excluding Multichoice, reported positive gains—such as 0.9% revenue growth and strong cash generation—the picture for the South African operation is one of decline.
The French media giant isolated Multichoice’s results and provided an operational overview, highlighting its recent struggles.
After experiencing impressive growth from 2010 to 2023, Multichoice has faced challenges since, it said.
These include the combined effects of macro-economic factors, a difficult transition to OTT with the expensive failure of Showmax, and strong inflation across most cost items.
This negatively impacted its profitability.
Canal+ noted that Multichoice attempted to address the situation with short-term measures, but these negatively affected the subscriber base, worsening the original profitability issues.
Continuing this trend, revenues decreased by €142 million (6%) from €2,542 million in 2024 to €2,400 million in 2025, driven by a decline in its subscriber base from 14.9 million to 14.4 million.
In 2026, Multichoice is facing a R2.7 billion negative impact from the inertia of its subscriber base driving a decrease in revenues, and from cost inflation, it said.
Despite the challenges, Canal+ said that Multichoice has the potential to turn things around, and in line with this goal, it has compiled a €100 million (approximately R1.9 billion) “boost plan” for the group.
The boost plan is structured around four main pillars: content, commercial offers, sales, and operational restructuring.
Turning Multichoice around
Pillar 1: Content
In terms of content, Canal+ said it wants to offer “the most compelling content” on the African continent, which will include joint productions, in-house channels and global partnerships.
It said that key sports rights remain a cornerstone of this plan, while thousands of hours of local African content are produced annually.
The plan includes scaling international content and sharing content and rights across the group.
Pillar 2: Commercial offers
The group wants to streamline and simplify the different “commercial propositions” offered, with clearer pricing.
It noted that Multichoice currently offers up to 17 packages, with varying fees and five decoders. It aims to rationalise all the brands, which will aid in more targeted marketing.
Bleeding into the third pillar, the group wants to lower the cost of entry through equipment subsidies, which will expand its distribution network.
Pillar 3: Sales
Canal+ said it will launch an aggressive acquisition campaign with the aforementioned subsidies, as well as through more effective sales and marketing.
This includes recruiting over 1,000 salespeople “on the ground” across all of Multichoice’s markets to accelerate subscriber growth.
Pillar 4: Restructuring
The final pillar focuses on operations, which will see the group adopting best-practice models across all Multichoice’s markets, standardising operations and shifting the group to a sales-focused model.
To do so, Canal+ will lean into pillar 3—hiring new salespeople—while also initiating a voluntary severance plan across support functions at Multichoice.
It will also launch a restructuring programme at Irdeto, Multichoice’s technology and cybersecurity company.
Canal+ said these planned changes are consistent with the commitments it made during the acquisition of Multichoice.
They also align with the group’s ambition to streamline certain functions while investing more in activities that directly support the group’s growth and business development.
“These changes will be enacted in compliance with the social procedures of the relevant jurisdictions,” it said.
Canal+ expects to complete a secondary inward listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) by the first half of 2026, allowing South African investors to become shareholders in the combined group.
