Question of affordability in Nigeria’s Pay-TV market

Adeyinka Davies

Quality, affordability, and accessibility top the list of points to consider in making certain decisions like where to live, the school to attend, or send one’s kids to.

Also, on the list of those decisions is something that is not as basic as the type of pay-TV to subscribe to. When this decision is to be made in Nigeria, the choice is between one of the three major players in the country: DStv, GOtv, and StarTimes, and other players that control a very minute share of the market.

The point about affordability is one of the significant factors in the pay-TV market, and the biggest player in the Nigerian market, DStv, which MultiChoice owns, is always at the center of the conversation considering its relatively higher prices when compared to competitors.

The most common trend in the industry is the affordability card that’s being played by every player, especially new entrants, in the industry in grabbing their share of the market.

For context, none of the other pay-TV packages are above ₦5,000 compared to DStv, with three of its six packages below ₦5,000. GOtv’s biggest package has over 90 channels and costs ₦3,600.
The biggest package on DStv, Premium, costs ₦18,400 with over 175 channels while two of its packages that are below ₦5,000 each gives subscribers access to more than 95 channels: Confam at ₦4,615 has over 120 channels, and Yanga at ₦2,565 has over 95 channels.

Evidently, despite having a couple of relatively more expensive packages than those offered by competitors, DStv still has packages within competitors’ price range with access to more channels in some cases.

The offer of affordable packages from other competitors doesn’t seem to affect the market share of DStv in Nigeria, which raises the question of the kind of value that subscribers are getting from DStv that are not available on other platforms.

Compared to the competitors in the market, DStv has a wider array of channels that caters to every member of an average family.

The phrase “content is king,” commonly used in the marketing space, is also as relevant in the entertainment industry. Content is one of the critical drivers of the choice of pay-TV, and DStv has been aggressive in that aspect through the acquisition of content and production of original and local content.

Despite having over fifty thousand hours of local content on the platform, DStv is still aggressively acquiring local content while also investing more in local and original content as well.

For instance, a top accounting and consulting firm in Nigeria, Accenture, put the spending of DStv’s parent company in Nigeria to over $428 million between 2015 and 2019. And this fund went into sourcing and producing local content for all its platforms in Nigeria.

The five-year spending budget of DStv on content is above that of other competitors in the Nigerian market, a high price that DStv is paying to make sure that its subscribers have access to more quality content.

Earlier in the year, MultiChoice’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Calvo Mawela, in a CNN interview, revealed the company’s plan of going hyperlocal by aggressively increasing the share of local content on its platforms.

It’s evident that the DStv brand is not relenting in its effort to maintain its leadership status in the entertainment industry in Africa.

Another instance is sports and the fact that football is huge in Nigeria, which is evident with over 25 sport betting platforms operating in the country. The acquisition of TV rights to international and local sporting events by DStv makes it easy for the pay-TV to give subscribers access to more content that are not available on other pay-TV in the market, the English Premier League instance.

There is also access to exclusive content; DStv has exclusive shows like one of the longest-running television shows in Africa, Tinsel, and the likes of Judging Matters, Ultimate Love, the mega-hit Big Brother Naija, and Nigerian Idol.

All these point to the fact that DStv is banking on its wide range of content as its unique selling point in justification for its relatively higher prices. And since every member of an average family is a stakeholder in the decision-making process of the type of pay-TV platform to go for, including the package option, it only makes sense for DStv to have content and packages that cater to every member of the family.