This is good news for the teeming subscribers of Showmax our there. Showmax, which started as an idea three years ago, will be the major drive of MultiChoice’s goal of attracting 50 million paying subscribers in five years. This is a fifth of Netflix’s 260 million subscribers in Q4 2023 according to the group CEO of Multichoice Calvo Mawela. However, all markets are not created equal, and 50 million paying subscribers in the African market are ambitious. A mix of a startup mentality and riding the coattails of an established parent business will be critical for success.
Weeks after Amazon Prime beat a hasty retreat from Africa, Showmax, owners of Wura, The Real Housewives of Abuja, Spinners, and Adulting, presented a spectacle that shows how much it is betting the house on African streaming.
A few days in the first week of February, the Showmax team went to great lengths to show how much it believes in its ability to crack Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) in Africa.
For weeks, the company has talked up Showmax 2.0, its second iteration, the new technology that underpins the new app, the partnerships it believes will serve as a competitive advantage, and its unique understanding of the African market. A fun game would be taking a shot whenever a Showmax executive mentions their unique understanding of the African market.
According to them, after moving from the old app to the new a few weeks ago, it is believed this is the beginning of what the company hopes will be a long march into dominating and making a solid business of African video streaming.
Speaking at the launch, a member of the company’s marketing team, explained why the Showmax office sits in the corner of the MultiChoice campus, away from the rest of the main building. “We’re over here because we began as a startup, and we wanted that startup mentality. We wanted to begin without the guidance of our parent company,” he said. Showmax’s whos plan is to become the king of African streaming, most tech publications would call it a bet, but Andrea Zappia, former Sky executive recently named chairman of Showmax, disagrees.
“This is a logical investment,” he told an excited crowd of about 400 people at the MultiChoice dome, the venue of the launch, on Tuesday evening. Alongside Calvo Mawela, the group CEO of MultiChoice, the pair discussed some behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing that made this iteration of Showmax possible.
“Showmax and streaming are not just a project, it’s a passion. “It took a lot of convincing for these partners (Comcast, NBCU) to make their first investment in Africa,” said Mawela, referring to NBCU’s 30% equity investment in the streaming company. The conversations began in 2020 and were slowed down by the pandemic, but now everything is in place.
However, now the race is on for MultiChoice, a publicly listed company, to show its shareholders that it can pull off this bold bet. And if it’s feeling any pressure from Canal+ breathing down its neck, the company’s executives and employees don’t show it.
The company has set its own goals publicly, and now we must measure success or failure by its ability to capture 50 million paying subscribers by 2029. The journey starts now.
-Benprince Ezeh
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