Showmax

Showmax was a South African subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming television service that launched in 2015. Its majority owner (with a shareholding of 70%) was South African satellite TV company MultiChoice. American conglomerate NBCUniversal owned 30% in all territories except Nigeria, where NBCUniversal held an indirect 23.7% stake in the local subsidiary. In 2023, Showmax announced a partnership with NBCUniversal and Sky. The new Showmax launched in February 2024, with a brand-new app and streaming platform, as well as an unprecedented content slate. Showmax uses a localisation strategy to take on established video on demand competitors with a focus on local content and partnerships with mobile telcos. It has a customer base of 2.1 million subscribers Africa-wide first place in the continent's market overtaking Netflix's 1.8 million by November 2023. The Showmax catalogue consists of series, movies and documentaries from Hollywood, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and the UK, among others, and content in English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, Kiswahili, Sepedi, Setswana, Sesotho and isiXhosa, and other African languages. Showmax's engineering team was originally based in the Czech Republic, but has since merged with Sky UK's Global Streaming team.…

Showmax was a South African subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming television service that launched in 2015. Its majority owner (with a shareholding of 70%) was South African satellite TV company MultiChoice. American conglomerate NBCUniversal owned 30% in all territories except Nigeria, where NBCUniversal held an indirect 23.7% stake in the local subsidiary. In 2023, Showmax announced a partnership with NBCUniversal and Sky. The new Showmax launched in February 2024, with a brand-new app and streaming platform, as well as an unprecedented content slate. Showmax uses a localisation strategy to take on established video on demand competitors with a focus on local content and partnerships with mobile telcos. It has a customer base of 2.1 million subscribers Africa-wide first place in the continent's market overtaking Netflix's 1.8 million by November 2023. The Showmax catalogue consists of series, movies and documentaries from Hollywood, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and the UK, among others, and content in English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, Kiswahili, Sepedi, Setswana, Sesotho and isiXhosa, and other African languages. Showmax's engineering team was originally based in the Czech Republic, but has since merged with Sky UK's Global Streaming team. In March 2026, it was announced that Showmax would be shut down on 30 April and will be replaced by DStv Stream and in the near future, the Canal+ streaming service. ===Closure=== On 5 March 2026, MultiChoice's new owners Canal+ announced that Showmax would be discontinued after a comprehensive review of the former's streaming business. Showmax lost $522 million dollars in the 3 previous years with revenue declining from $61.6 million to $45.2 million. The shutdown is expected to raise cost savings from €150 million (approx. $ ) million 2025 to €250 million (approx. $ ) million in 2026. MultiChoice has started to rebrand Showmax Originals as content for its television channels. Six days later, it was announced that it will be replaced by the Canal+ app in the near future. For the meantime, Showmax content has since been moved to DStv Stream, starting from the Compact package and upwards. At the time of the closure announcement, Showmax had achieved significant annual subscriber growth, gained 27% of the South African streaming service market share, and gained 17% of the African streaming service market share, overtaking Netflix in terms of subscriber count. Despite this, due to reported poor management, the service had made multiple annual losses.

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