Subscriber losses mount for MultiChoice as financial challenges escalate
MultiChoice, a leading entertainment company, has revealed a staggering loss of 2.8 million active linear subscribers over the past two financial years, as it released its results for the year ending March 31, 2025.
In the reporting period linear subscribers were down 1.2m, or 8%, to 14.5m active subscribers, with the loss evenly split between South African (0.6m) and Rest of Africa (0.6m).
The group said although reflecting an improvement on 2024 trends, "this indicates ongoing broad-based pressure across the group's entire customer base".
"The past two financial years have been a period of significant financial disruption for economies, corporates and consumers across sub-Saharan Africa due to challenging macro-economic factors. Combined with the impact of structural industry changes in video entertainment such as the rise of piracy, streaming services and social media, this has materially affected the overall performance of the MultiChoice Group," it said.
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Your CV needs more than just coding. AI readiness is about more than programming. Skills in communication, business strategy, ethics, and even psychology are now just as valuable. Training is free, if you know where to look. Companies like Salesforce and Zoho are offering open-access training, internships, and rural digital hubs. Jobs aren't disappearing, they're shifting. Data entry might be automated, but someone still needs to guide the agents. AI is a tool, not a takeover. The more you understand it, the more irreplaceable you become. Think beyond our borders. With SA's youth unemployment pushing 60%, the real opportunity might be global. Local startups and students are already getting remote gigs with international firms. The internet doesn't care about your postcode. Bottom line: If you wait for government policy to catch up, you'll be left behind. Start skilling up now; even ten hours a week can change your trajectory. Disproving the replacement theory Both CRM companies are quick to reject the narrative that AI will simply replace human workers, even though they're selling agentic AI. 'At no point is it creating unemployment,' Fisher argues. 'In the same way, agents are going to make certain things probably redundant, data capture, data analysis, those jobs will grow, right? Because AI can do the data analysis, but then it's going to create new jobs that are more powerful because you have context.' Nizam says Zoho's internal experience suggests a more measured reality: AI provides '30% to 40%' productivity improvement, not the '5x to 10x' often promised, partly because 'reading the AI-generated code is a nightmare.' The reality is that the stakes couldn't be higher – 60% of African organisations view AI skills as critical to their success, but 100% expect to face skills gaps. The companies getting it right are those recognising that in an agentic AI world, the most valuable skill might not be writing code, but understanding how to make machines work better with humans. DM
