MultiChoice not considering pay-as-you-go subscription option

Slashes decoder prices
South African company, Multichoice that operates the DStv and GOtv in Nigeria, has ruled out the possibility of implementing pay-as-you-go in the pay television industry in the country.

According to the firm, such a subscription model would neither work for its DStv nor its GOtv services. It explained, however, that the pay-per-view option is rather very expensive.

Speaking at a virtual media parley, MultiChoice Chief Customer Officer, Martin Mabutho, while announcing price slash on its DStv and GOtv decoders, said the billing model has no empirical practice anywhere, adding that it is not only technically impracticable, but also contractually cumbersome.

He explained that it is not a question of wanting to implement it, but also its workability. He likened it to playing a football match and one team scoring and people asking for refund because some 45,000 supporters of the losing club would exit the stadium. He dared anybody with information about where the subscription model is working in the world to say it.

On the price slash, he said it would see the DStv HD decoder, dish kit with Compact package subscription drop from N18,600 to N9,900 on Confam package, while GOtv decoder, GOtennae with GOtv Jolli package subscription will go down from N8,400 to N6,900.

DStv Confam is one of two recently-improved DStv packages specially designed for the Nigerian family. With over 120 channels, DStv Confam offers the best of family time with international entertainment, kids, news and sports boasting of a range of channels including SuperSport La Liga, CBS Reality, FOX, BET and Cartoon Network.

GOtv Jolli, also a recently-improved package on the DTT offering, offers a broad selection of over 68 local and international channels to choose from. Some of the channels available include SuperSport Football, ROK 2, Telemundo, FOX, Davinci Learning and Africa News.

Mabutho said the price slash was part of MultiChoice’s efforts to lessening the economic impact of COVID on customers and a reflection of its commitment to making quality entertainment more accessible to Nigerians.

“With this discount, we are lowering the entry barrier for new customers to get a DStv or GOtv decoder as staying connected to credible information and other quality programming can be comforting for many families during these trying times.

“In addition to the discount we are running our DStv Step Up offer which gives our customers on lower packages an opportunity to experience programming on higher packages, and a GOtv Max offer, which sees customers on Jolli and Jinja enjoy a special discount of N2,999 instead of N3,600 per month,” Mabutho added. The discounted DStv and GOtv bundle offer started on February 1.