MultiChoice Nigeria Limited, a leading entertainment company and operator of DStv and Gotv is a success story that started in 1993. One of the stakeholders behind this accomplishment is the chairman of the company, 57 year-old Adewunmi Ogunsanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and an astute businessman of repute with extensive investment in other areas of the economy such as commercial real estate development, agriculture and agro allied among others.
Mindful that many Nigerians have little knowledge about the company and its operations, Ogunsanya would often emphasis that MultiChoice Nigeria is a Nigerian company, registered in Nigeria with shareholders from around the globe, including Nigeria, even as he acknowledges that it has its roots in South Africa.
The investor is also concerned about the classification of MultiChoice Nigeria as a monopoly. Nigeria is a free market with other investors licensed in the broadcasting industry. “How exactly is it that we suffocate our competitors? By denying them the airwaves? By denying them their license? By blocking their offices? Or is it by stopping them from coming up with ideas?” he asks rhetorically. He further explains that when the company started, it made huge investments in equipment and had very few subscribers. “We were making huge losses, but we stayed the course until our number of subscribers began to rise. Today we may be referred to as a dominant player perhaps, but not a monopoly,” he says.
Ogunsanya who graduated with a law degree from the University of Kent in 1984 explains that Pay TV business is one that demands long term investment. “You cannot invest today and expect returns tomorrow. If you invest with a short-term view, you will fail”.
Focus on customer satisfaction
Despite challenges, the Pay TV company keeps trudging on as a business. It owes this feat to its investors and the team of management’s focus on ground-breaking innovations, complemented with deep understanding of the customer. This of course has paid off as MultiChoice, by its investments in local content and sports is a persistent firm.
With the chairman and his co-investors’ trust on the management led by John Ugbe as CEO, MultiChoice believes that customer is not only the king but reason for its sustainability and retaining its over 700 direct employees.
The chairman also strongly believes that the company’s customers are at the heart of the business and they drive the management to do better on an on-going basis. According to the company’s management, it is “always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to improve our customers’ overall experiences with quality products and services. We are constantly driven to ensure that customers are satisfied with the overall quality of our services”.
Under Ogunsanya’s leadership as chairman, MultiChoice rolled out owned channels in three local Nigerian languages – Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. This reinforces the chairman’s statement that he is a strong believer in Nigeria and Nigerian culture and he understands the power of such medium in influencing and transporting culture. He has encouraged the company’s management to introduce a low-end mass focused digital terrestrial pay TV; supported Nollywood, the country’s film industry with annual film budgets of up to $35m; supported a multi-layered talent academy, and a pan-African, Oscar-styled viewers’ choice honours event – Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA). Today, a well-praised initiative called ‘Sabi Men’, has seen over 10,000 youth recruited and taken off the streets, in a country where over 33 percent of the youth population is unemployed.
MultiChoice is not only moving with the time, which is driven, by technology, youthfulness and globalisation but it is futuristic which has continued to ensure brand loyalty.
John Ugbe who was promoted to CEO in 2018, reiterates Ogunsanya’s views, saying, “For us at MultiChoice, there are certain fundamentals we don’t compromise because we know if we keep those elements in focus and stay consistent, we’ll not only survive the business environment, we will thrive. Number one is keeping the customers at the centre of all we do from both the pricing and content standpoints”.
Principally, DStv packages have today become a form of succour for the middle and low-income earners in Nigeria.
Contributing to Economic growth
MultiChoice Nigeria with great support from the chairman and other investors is not only contributing to customer satisfaction by showing entertaining programmes and sports to the delight of viewers, but it is supporting economic growth through empowering content producers and investing in the economy.
Accenture, a top accounting and consulting firm in Nigeria, according to a statement recently measured the socio-economic impact of MultiChoice business in Nigeria between 2015 and 2019.
The statement quoting the report revealed that MultiChoice Nigeria had contributed an estimated US$2.1bn (about N800b) to the Nigerian economy within the period under review. The investment within the period is apart from its huge investments since 1993 when it entered Nigeria.
Accenture estimated that the company had specifically spent over $428 million in developing local creative talent, as a result of sourcing and producing local content for DStv, GOtv, M-Net, SuperSport, and Africa Magic, and investing in building local production infrastructure.
This investment has greatly helped to support the Nigerian movie industry, ensuring that Nollywood movies are available across Africa and the rest of the world.
According to the statement, Adewunmi Ogunsanya, chairman, MultiChoice Nigeria, said “The report illustrates MultiChoice Nigeria’s total economic impact in Nigeria, including direct, indirect and encouraged influence on the country’s GDP. The statistics provide further information on the considerable positive socio-economic impact that our operations have made in the development of the communities in which we operate.”
Through its business operations, investments in technology, local infrastructure, Corporate Social Investment (CSI) initiatives and local partnerships, MultiChoice Nigeria has enriched an estimated two million lives each year through initiatives such as MultiChoice Resource Centres, MultiChoice Talent Factory, GOtv Boxing, Sickle Cell Foundation, the Let’s Play initiative, among others. MultiChoice Nigeria has spent US$34.8m in supporting these initiatives, the report further said.
MultiChoice management is also a big supporter of other home grown Nigerian television content such as ‘Doctors Quarters’, ‘The Johnsons’, ‘Edge of Paradise’, ‘Big Brother Naija’ the biggest reality show in sub-Saharan Africa and ‘Tinsel’; which today is unarguably the longest-running soap opera on Nigerian television among others.
From its portfolio of grassroots sporting programmes to organising award events that celebrate excellence, and diverse investments in educational and entertaining content, it is evident that MultiChoice Nigeria has evolved from being the small company that opened shop in Lagos with 30 employees in 1993, into being one of the most impactful and admired brands in the country.
MultiChoice trajectory in Nigeria
In Nigeria, the company started analogue bouquets of six channels from that to over 100 channels today.
In its early years, it introduced a big dish which was like a status symbol among Nigerians to have but because it foresaw the importance of digital TV in the country MultiChoice in collaboration with Utel-SAT invested over $20 million to launch satellite over Nigeria which enabled it to introduce smaller dishes.
In 2010, the organisation moved from the initial satellite that was launched to W-7 primarily because there is more capacity on W-7 and to reduce the incidence of rain challenges as this was one of the issues viewers always faced. Though losing signal during heavy rain is inherent with satellite technology but moving to W-7, gave it more power to reduce those incidences.
Based on Adewunmi Ogunsanya’s outstanding contributions to the media, technology, and entertainment industry in Nigeria and his strong investment knowledge and trust in his management, there is no doubt that Nigerians it has contributed to the unique offerings by MultiChoice in the Nigerian pay TV industry.
