When Showmax first went live on 19 August 2015, it was more than another streaming app landing in South Africa. It was Naspers’s big bet that a homegrown platform could take on the global giants, build a loyal African audience, and beat Netflix on local turf. That bet has now reached its end, with the service in Africa set to be phased out on 30 April.
The latest trading update from Canal+ made clear what many subscribers had already started to suspect. Showmax revenue slipped from €12-million in the first quarter of 2025 to €9-million in the first quarter of 2026, a decline of 25% in just one year. For a platform that was meant to be scaling fast, those numbers tell a bleak story.
Back in 2015, the local streaming market looked very different. Netflix had not yet launched in South Africa, and the alternatives were thin on the ground. Times Media’s Vidi and Altech’s Node were among the few local names trying to make a go of it, but neither had real momentum. Showmax arrived with 11 000 hours of content, a seven-day free trial and a simple R99 a month subscription, which made it one of the first serious streaming propositions in the country.
The timing was deliberate. Naspers had seen Reed Hastings talk up Netflix’s global ambitions earlier that year and clearly did not want to hand over the South African market without a fight. Showmax was initially kept outside the main MultiChoice structure and led by former DStv Digital Media boss John Kotsaftis, who was tasked with giving the business a more startup-style edge.
At launch, the pitch was that Showmax would win because it understood the local market better than any foreign rival. Kotsaftis argued that the platform’s content library was broader and its local offering far stronger than Netflix’s. In the early days, that argument carried real weight, especially among viewers looking for South African stories rather than an imported catalogue.
The platform found its first major local hit with Tali’s Wedding Diary, the mockumentary starring Julia Anastasopoulos, better known to many viewers through Suzelle DIY. That success was followed by The Girl from St Agnes in 2019, Showmax’s first scripted drama and another sign that the service was beginning to build something distinctly South African.
For a while, the business looked like it might become a genuine streaming success story. By the end of its first year, Showmax had reportedly recorded 10 million views, and its branding had shifted from “ShowMax” to the more contemporary lower-case Showmax. Analysts at the time, including Morgan Stanley, projected the service could break even in 2021 with around 800 000 subscribers. Those expectations were modest compared with today’s streaming giants, but they were grounded in reality.
That period now feels like the platform’s high-water mark. Kotsaftis left in 2018 and the standalone streaming business was folded back into MultiChoice. From there, the strategy began to drift closer to what DStv had always done best: sport. In 2020, Showmax Pro launched at R449 a month, bundling football and other live sports from SuperSport with the entertainment catalogue. The base tier remained at R99, but the product was now being asked to do much more.
Showmax’s collapse and the end of the South African streaming dream
The real turning point came in March 2023, when MultiChoice sold 30% of Showmax to Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Sky. The move brought in Peacock’s streaming technology and access to content from the likes of HBO, Warner Bros, Sony and others. In effect, the platform was rebuilt from the ground up in the hope that a major international partnership could finally unlock scale.
Showmax 2.0 launched in February 2024 across 44 African markets, with a fresh app, new branding and a three-tier pricing model. Former MultiChoice executive Yolisa Phahle was reportedly backing ambitions of US$1-billion in annual revenue and 16 million subscribers within five years. It was a bold vision, but the numbers never came close to backing it up.
Instead, the platform started haemorrhaging money. Showmax recorded trading losses of R2.6-billion in the year ended 31 March 2024. The following year, those losses climbed 88% to R4.9-billion, helping drag MultiChoice Group’s trading profit down 49% to R4-billion. Management itself admitted subscriber growth was “well short” of expectations.
By the time Canal+ took control of MultiChoice in September 2025, the writing was already on the wall. Canal+ chief executive Maxime Saada later described Showmax as “not a commercial success”, while MultiChoice boss David Mignot told TechCentral that the platform “can’t continue” and was “not flying” financially or commercially. The formal announcement on 5 March that Showmax would be discontinued was little more than confirmation of what the market had already figured out.
Canal+ then went further, calling the service an “expensive failure” in its 2025 results. Subscribers were given 30 April as the final shutdown date. From 1 May, a selection of Showmax Originals will move into a dedicated section on DStv Stream, but the international catalogue that helped define the 2024 relaunch will not survive in its current form.
That means the HBO, Warner Bros, Paramount and Peacock titles that gave the new Showmax a more global feel will no longer sit in one standalone app for African users. Showmax-only customers have been offered DStv Stream Compact at a discounted R99 per month for 12 months, a clear attempt to keep them inside the broader Canal+ ecosystem.
For viewers, the immediate shift may not feel dramatic. Many of the Showmax Originals are being migrated, and the content will eventually reappear on the Canal+ app as the group pushes its “one Canal+, one brand” strategy. Sport and entertainment under one roof remains a powerful selling point, especially in South Africa where live football still drives subscription decisions.
But the bigger loss is symbolic. Showmax in 2015 represented the first serious attempt by a South African company to build a streaming service that could stand on its own against the world’s biggest players. It was not positioned as a reseller or a side project. It was built as a local answer to a global problem: how to create a platform that understood African viewers better than imported competitors ever could.
In the end, that idea came closest to working before the company tried to scale into something much bigger and more expensive. Showmax was ambitious, culturally relevant and, for a time, genuinely innovative. But the economics never caught up with the dream, and now the service that once symbolised South Africa’s streaming ambitions is heading quietly off the stage.