Billions wasted, well over R10bn in trading losses – how Showmax failed

MultiChoice pinned its hopes on the streaming service being a competitor to global platforms such as Netflix and Disney+, but this effort has come to an inglorious end. This is a remarkable, but not unexpected,call from the new owner. The end of the standalone Showmax streaming service has been a long time coming, with Canal+ Group CEO Maxime Saada saying shortly after the acquisition that, while everything was under review, he did not believe that MultiChoice’s multi-brand plan would work.

Later, he admitted that Showmax was “not a commercial success”. Basically, nothing that MultiChoice planned regarding Showmax panned out. In the most recent financial year where MultiChoice was still listed (to April 2025), Showmax reported revenue of R753 million, with a trading loss of R4.947 billion.

Practically all of this was subscription revenue (with only R3 million coming from advertising and other revenue). That year was Showmax’s “peak investment year” according to MultiChoice. It has literally wasted billions on content to get to this point.

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Until this, it had endured trading losses of R8.8 billion from the new venture, where – since April 2023 – Comcast via NBCUniversal acquired 30% of the streaming unit. It is a hop, skip and a jump to imagine that the trading losses for the current year aren’t exactly much lower than the last year. Even though this protracted takeover took a while, it is not obvious that MultiChoice would’ve closed the taps.

It has thrown everything – and the kitchen sink – at Showmax with not much success. Its subscription revenue from Showmax in FY23, the base year, was R839 million. Following the relaunch in early 2024, it managed to boost this to R1 billion – an increase of 22%.

The real test came the following year, where revenue declined 27% to R753 million (it booked R3 million in advertising and other revenue in that year). This was clearly not the launch MultiChoice had been hoping for.

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