After 25 years of charging heavily to customers through packages setup despite having unwanted and unwatched channels, it looks like Multichoice has finally seen the light.
The pay-TV service provider is testing out “unbundling” its entertainment, sports, and movie channels in what is being called “DStv Flex”.
DSTV flex means is that a customer will be able to pick which channels to subscribe to with a minimum of 10.
It looks like DStv has taken the model that SlingTV uses. The service operates two base packages (Orange and Blue) with a blend of news, entertainment and lifestyle channels.
The flex will be additional packages like sports, more precise entertainment and lifestyle channels depending on your content consumption.
People who like sports no longer have to pay for those channels.
Getting the rights to screen sports is not cheap particularly when you look at the number of leagues and various types of sports available on DStv.
Big blow to Multi-Choice as Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) now looking to make some sporting events free to air.
The move comes after accessing sports on DStv and other services becoming pretty expensive and ICASA is looking to classify some sports programming under “public interest”.
“There is a growing need to level the playing field between traditional broadcasting, on-demand services providers – these include catch-up TV service, video-on-demand services as well as news portals – and video-sharing platforms. It has been quite a journey to get this draft White Paper to this stage. We are steadily moving towards the implementation stage now,” says Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams.
The sporting events mostly targeted are the ones under the South African context. They have to have a specific number of South Africans participating and international events like the Olympics and World Cups.
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