DStv’s SuperSport faces major shake-up under Canal+ rule

Key topics:Canal+ centralises sports rights, strips SuperSport powerStreamers threaten DStv’s sports dominanceLocal content delays raise SABC-style concerns.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Myles Illidge.MultiChoice’s new owner, Canal+, has stripped SuperSport of its acquisition power, with decisions about which sports to carry now made directly from Paris, France.Veteran broadcasting journalist Thinus Ferreira told 702 that this was because Canal+ has told investors it must cut costs. However, this presents a problem because it cannot fire staff for three years.“They are looking at cutting back on costs. One of the things they are doing is they’ve taken away all of the acquisition power from SuperSport,” he said.“Our new European masters are deciding for us which sports they will buy or not, directly from Paris in France, where Canal+’s head office is.”Ferreira explained that the chief content officer at Canal+’s head office is deciding what sports rights to acquire for SuperSport.“DStv subscribers who are paying to get access to the stuff will, for instance, have seen that they are no longer getting the Winter Olympic Games for the first time in decades,” he said.“It’s because Canal+ has decided not to buy it, like the World Darts Championships and other things.”In January 2026, Ferreira told MyBroadband that it’s “just a matter of time” before international players with large budgets, such as Netflix, start ripping away more sports content from SuperSport.He warned that MultiChoice’s DStv is facing a growing threat of losing its dominance over sports broadcasting in South Africa.“Streamers like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and others have more money to spend on content and to acquire more content,” Ferreira said.“It is just a matter of time before they rip away more sports — the lifeblood of traditional pay-TV — from it.”He explained that SuperSport has maintained its dominance not because the SABC or E-tv aren’t willing to buy premium, popular sports rights, but because the rights are too expensive.“SuperSport, therefore, gobbles it up. But a bigger fish is moving up from the depths and will start snapping up what SuperSport used to feed on itself,” Ferreira said..Read more:.MultiChoice CEO eyes $3bn Canal+ deal to compete with streaming giants.He said these players will be able to acquire sports rights at a price point where Canal+ and SuperSport can’t afford to pay.“WWE already jumped to Netflix. In Australia, English Premier League (EPL) jumped from traditional pay-TV to a streamer, along with a lot of rugby, and basically all cricket to Amazon Prime Video,” he said.“So in that sense, DStv stands to be eclipsed at some point in time, in the way that DStv eclipsed the SABC.”DStv going down the same road as the SABC.Canal+ has also been slow in approving production contracts for local content on DStv’s kykNET and Mzansi Magic channels.Sources close to the matter told Ferreira that many unsigned contracts for local content, including series and soaps, are piled up at Canal+ headquarters.The French media giant has reportedly stripped MultiChoice and M-Net of their autonomy to approve local productions.At the same time, the popular American show Landman has been dubbed into Afrikaans for kykNET, replacing the 21:00 slot from Sunday, 22 February 2026.This has raised questions about whether DStv viewers should expect more translated and dubbed movies and TV shows from the US and France.Canal+ could learn from the SABC, which alienated large portions of its Afrikaans audience when it cancelled 7de Laan and made several other changes.The SABC’s new approach to Afrikaans confused many industry insiders, who warned that the Afrikaans audience was still attractive to advertisers.The SABC’s own research showed that kykNET was the most valuable channel for South African advertisers.The public broadcaster has admitted that it made mistakes in shuffling and reducing Afrikaans content in recent years.Since 2023, it has cut two popular, decades-old Afrikaans shows: 7de Laan and Fokus, from SABC. It also moved its remaining Afrikaans programming to S3, which has far lower viewership and less advertiser appeal.That included shifting the Afrikaans news bulletin from 18:30 on SABC 2 to 20:30 on S3, which sparked criticism from Afrikaans viewers, many of whom said they were already in bed by that time.The broadcaster’s complete omission of the bulletin over the weekend of 5 and 6 April 2025 caused an uproar.The SABC has since reversed course, returning the Afrikaans news bulletin to its original timeslot and promising new original content..Read more:.Canal+ offers $2.9bn for Multichoice, targets African expansion.However, the truth about why the SABC tried to move its Afrikaans programming to SABC 3 may be more nuanced than initially believed.Technology research and advisory firm BMIT recently delivered its presentation to the parliamentary subcommittee on communications about potential financial models to replace SABC TV Licences.BMIT mentioned that SABC 2 was considered “non-commercial”, whereas SABC 3 was considered a commercial channel.This arbitrary classification may have impacted the public broadcaster’s decision to move Afrikaans content from its established home on SABC 2 to SABC 3..This article was first published by MyBroadband and is republished with permission.

DStv’s SuperSport faces major shake-up under Canal+ rule

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