#35: MultiChoice - How the South African Pay TV pioneer became the largest entertainment provider across Africa

Overview: Today, we’re going to talk about MultiChoice - The African video entertainment provider. We’ll explore the MultiChoice story across 5 areas: South African video entertainment market context MultiChoice's launch & growth over time MultiChoice's product & monetization strategy Competition, primary & emerging businesses Overall outlook This episode was recorded on August 15, 2021 Companies discussed: MultiChoice (M-Net), Naspers, MTN, ShowMax, BetKing, Comcast, Sky, DSTV, MTN, Iroko TV, HiTV, StarTimes, Vivendi Canal+, ROK Media, English Premier League, Netflix, HBO Max, ShowMax, Showtime & BBC Business concepts discussed: Pan-African expansion strategy, Entertainment content acquisition strategy, subscription & hardware monetization strategy Conversation highlights: (02:20) - Why we’re talking about MultiChoice (06:50) - South African TV context (15:28) - Origin and early history of MultiChoice (26:10) - Product & monetization strategy (34:05) - MultiChoice device / decoder strategy (38:20) - Content, Partnerships & M&A (42:30) - MultiChoice Financials and key metrics (46:54) - Competition across different business lines (51:40) - Non-core businesses and investments, BetKing (1:05:00) - Bankole’s overall thoughts and outlook (1:12:02) - Olumide’s overall thoughts and outlook (1:26:28) - Recommendations and small wins Olumide’s recommendations & small wins: Recommendation: Die with Zero (Bill Perkins) Small wins: Night out with SF friends & Sailing with friends in Sausalito Bankole’s recommendations & small wins: Recommendation: Omah Lay - Understand & Robert Smith of Vista Equity on Money Maze Podcast Small wins: Attended a wedding last weekend, Happy Married Life Dami! + Chelsea FC Winnning! Other content mentioned: South Africa as TV’s last frontier Listeners: We’d love to hear from you. Please email [email protected] with your feedback! Founders: We'd love to hear about you & what you're working on, email us at [email protected] Investors: We'd also love to link up with you, to partner to drive the ecosystem forward. Contact us at [email protected] Episodes at Afrobility.com