MultiChoice
spent 800million dollars on Gotv
Call it a magical night filled with only
the best of African entertainment or Africa’s biggest content showcase
extravaganza you are right. That was the atmosphere as MultiChoice Africa hosted
its second content show at the Outrigger Resort, Mauritius Island last week. It
was a 5-day content extravaganza that witnessed DStv’s biggest channels
previewing their latest and greatest contents, reports Assistant Editor (Arts)
OZOLUA UHAKHEME.
If the caliber of guests that walked
down the red-carpet on to the sensational night of dazzling event was a measure
of success, this year’s content show has not only hit the mark, but also
achieved its desire objective-offering the biggest week in Africa’s video
entertainment.
Laced with glitz and glamour of
Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood berthing on the Mauritius Island paradise,
guests that included Genevieve Nnaji, Rita Dominic, Desmond Elliot, Ramsey
Nuoah, Basket Mouth, Eku Edewor, MC Ik, Banky W, DJ Sose, Flavour, Stoneboy and
The Mavins were given the full music and movie-star treatment. It was a night
that featured IK and Eku as MCs.
However, the week-long event provided opportunity for MultiChoice and
its various partners to provide answers to some issues affecting the industry,
especially piracy, pricing, repeating of programmes and local contents among
others. Chief Executive Officer MultiChoice Africa Tim Jacobs described piracy
as a massive threat to broadcasters and right holders across the globe adding
that ‘they are only enriching themselves.’ He said MultiChoice Africa is
however working with
rights holders and broadcasters to tackle it, but that it is a moving target
because ‘their infrastructure means they can open new portals as we shut others
down.’ He said it’s not easy to evaluate how big the impact is, since by
definition, a lot of it is underground and spread through social media.
Jacobs who spoke at an interaction with
the media at this year’s content show held at OutRigger Beach Resort, Mauritius
Island said the challenge is broader as certain competitors broadcast a beam
that comes down into Africa. “If you have that decoder and smart card that can
pick up a service that is not designed to be broadcast in African territories,
that is also piracy because the rights for that territory either haven’t been
assigned or they are owned by a mainstream service,” he added.
Reacting to question on video
entertainment service provider’s pricing structure, Jacobs said MultiChoice
Africa is constantly evaluating its cost structures while taking into account
the cost of content relative to its different audience groups.
He noted that there have been massive
increases in the cost of content such as the English Premier League football
rights, which MultiChoice has factored into its pricing. We’re conscious that a
large part of the population is looking for a good set of quality content at
the bottom end of the market, in the USD10 area, and we make decisions on the
price points of our bouquet structure – it’s a continuous evaluation. We’re
looking at alternatives too – there’s strong consumer behavior (especially in
Nigeria) where many consumers are self-employed, and therefore, not monthly
earners, so we’re looking at whether it’s viable to address a different type of
model. However, it’s not something that’s on the immediate cards.
On the potential for a premium offering on GOtv, he said: “The market for GOtv is specific, and
targeted at viewers sitting on analogue signals. This is a sector of the
population that has never engaged on Pay TV. They get a rich experience on a
digital platform but at a price point that’s at the bottom of the affordability
scale. If you start to move up the value chain, you start to confuse the market
between the DStv product, which is aspirational and high-value, and GOtv which
is a fun, new, mass-market product. There’s also a capacity on DTT that’s much
more restrictive than what we have on satellite, so there are also technical
reasons to why we have to be more cautious.”
According to him, pay-per-view sounds
attractive, but it is actually a red herring. He said an easy example is the
Mayweather/Pacquiao boxing match earlier this year, which sold on Pay-Per-View
across the world – in the USA at USD99 for 3-4 hours of viewing. “Across the
continent, subscribers pay less than that for DStv Premium for a whole month of
viewing across all our channels – and in this instance, that included that
fight, which was broadcast on SuperSport. That’s the benefit of scale for us.
“If you segment sports, for example the
EPL, the reality is that the cost of that is much higher than everyone thinks
because you need to divide up those expensive rights between a much smaller
viewing populations so the cost goes up exponentially. That doesn’t mean we’re
not looking at Pay-Per-View as an option – we need to be flexible and we get a
lot of requests for it. We’re watching consumer demand and looking at whether
it’s economically viable. It’s not on the cards right now, though, but we do
have a research team trying to work that out,” he noted.
He disclosed that MultiChoice investment
in GOtv is in excess of USD800 million, in 8 countries across the continent and
to recover such money means that MultiChoice cannot roll out towers into every
city where the population size and affordability aspect lend itself to
Free-To-Air (FTA). This, he said, explained why GOtv cannot be accessed in all
regions of the continent, adding that ‘we look at each market on the basis of
population size and the economics of rolling out a network.’
“Because we’re a Pay TV service, we
can’t offer FTA service like governments do. In those areas, we’d typically
pair up with an FTA operator, or the national broadcaster, which is a big part
of our offering. We have a limit in terms of where our network reaches – we can
generally cover 70-80% of a country. Areas that are remote need to be serviced
through our satellite services because of factors including accessibility and
terrain - the DTT signal needs to go across ground. Normally the national
broadcaster or signal provider has the responsibility to ensure that FTA has
national coverage, so they put towers in areas that it’s not economical for Pay
TV providers to do,” he said.
On striking a balance between the
commissioning of in-house and independent productions, the M-Net Regional
Director West Africa Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu said: “We make productions in-house, but
also commission, do co-productions and acquire content from elsewhere. You
can’t generate enough content in-house. We need multiple production platforms
to be able to service our subscribers with the quality content they desire. Our
premise is that our content is created by Africa, for Africa, and we continue
to nurture and build creative talent, in the hope of developing future
producers and directors. We invest in building them up to the quality standards
we want. A good mixture of in-house and commissioned content also allows for
greater variety and allows us to engage with audience and local producers -
that’s how we build talent on the continent. As the Maisha Magic channels roll
out, our business model is to nurture local producers and once the channels are
off the ground that’s a strong focus for us.”
The show witnessed the hosting of DStv’s
and GOtv’s biggest channels such as Sony, SuperSport, Zee World, A+E, Disney,
MTV Base, BET, Comedy Central, BBC and M-Net.
