MultiChoice and its new French owner Canal+ will soon have to reconfigure its deals and relationship with Netflix after the streaming giant’s move to acquire Warner Bros Discovery. This, as the DStv operator is negotiating the future of 12 channels from Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) on its platform. If a deal is not reached by December 31, channels including Discovery and CNN International will fall away from Africa’s largest pay TV service.
On Friday, Netflix and WBD announced they had entered into a definitive agreement that will see the world’s largest paid video streamer acquire Warner Bros, including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO. The cash and stock transaction is valued at $27.75 per WBD share, with a total enterprise value of about $82.7bn and equity accounting for $72bn of the total. This comes at a time when Canal+ took control of MultiChoice in September.
The French group is looking to leverage its now bigger size to get more favourable deals that will help drive down its operating costs while working to recover lost customers and gain new ones. Earlier in the week, the group told DStv customers that 12 channels risked being lost. “The distribution agreement between MultiChoice and Warner Bros.
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Discovery for Discovery Channel, TLC, Discovery Family, Real Time, TNT Africa, Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, Investigation Discovery, Cartoon Network, Cartoonito and CNN International is scheduled to conclude on December 31,” the company said in a statement sent to Business Day. Canal+ carries 11 of WBD’s channels on its platform. “At this stage, no new agreement has been reached between the parties.
Should this remain the case, these channels will no longer form part of the DStv line-up from January,” MultiChoice said. Canal+ likely understands that WBD has been weak for some time, particularly its television broadcast unit in charge of the channels under contention. In fact, Netflix has only agreed to acquire WBD’s studio and streaming business.
The linear broadcast division, seen by many as less attractive owing to declines in legacy media, will trade separately. As a bigger entity, now accounting for more than 40-million customers, Canal+ is better positioned to get a better deal for channels, especially as DStv is the only pay TV platform able to reach African audiences at scale.
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