French media giant Canal+ has announced it will discontinue the loss-making South African streaming service Showmax after acquiring its owner MultiChoice, the continent’s largest pay-TV enterprise.
The streaming platform, launched by MultiChoice in 2015, is available in at least 44 African countries and has been home to African films and TV series.
“MultiChoice, part of Canal+ SA, today announces the forthcoming discontinuation of the Showmax service,” Canal+ said in a statement on Thursday.
“The substantial annual losses experienced by the Showmax business have proved unsustainable.”
Showmax reported trading losses of R2,6 billion for the year ending March 2024, followed by losses of R4,9 billion the following year, bringing total losses to approximately R7,5 billion over two years.
MultiChoice had invested heavily in the platform, spending R3,3 billion on relaunching Showmax 2.0 in 2024, which included upgrading technology infrastructure and integrating Comcast’s Peacock platform.
Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada previously acknowledged that Showmax “is not a commercial success” and had “been losing a lot of money over the last few years”.
The discontinuation will not result in job losses, the statement said. MultiChoice plans to deploy its own “in-house large-scale streaming platform” for African and international customers.
Showmax confirmed the closure in an email sent to subscribers, saying the move aimed to ensure “long-term sustainability in an increasingly competitive streaming environment”.
The September buyout of MultiChoice by Canal+, valued at around $3 billion (R54 billion), created a group present in 70 countries across Africa, Europe and Asia with a workforce of 17 000 serving more than 40 million subscribers.
The company said it was the largest transaction ever undertaken by Canal+.
Already the sector’s leader in French-speaking African countries, the French company said at the time of the acquisition that MultiChoice was the leader in the continent’s English and Portuguese-speaking regions.
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