A little note for Canal+ on Nigerian content

Having met all the regulatory demands after shelling out $2bn for the purchase of Multichoice, Canal+, last week, made some strategic appointments by way of activating a mandatory takeover of the African pay-TV giant. The field of play is about to change or has it dramatically changed already?

David Mignot will serve as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) while outgoing CEO of Multichoice, Calvo Mawela, will assume the office of the Chairman. Others are: Nicholas Dandoy – CFO, Africa, Aziz Diallo, CEO, PayTV, French-speaking Africa, Byron du Plessis, CEO, PayTV, South Africa, Fhulufhelo “Fhulu” Badugela, CEO, PayTV, Rest of Africa, Nomsa Philiso, Director, Content, Sport and General Entertainment, English and Portuguese-speaking Africa, Keabakswe Modimoeng, Director, Public Affairs, English and Portuguese-speaking Africa, and Karim Bouzid, Director, Integration, Africa.

Apart from the CEO, Chairman and the CFO, I have, for the sake of this material, picked from a long list of appointees, people whose functions will impact on operations in my part of the continent.

Speaking of the team, Mignot enthused: “We have an incredible Africa leadership team with an exceptional track record across the continent and within the global group. Working together, we will deliver growth across the continent by telling unique, high-quality African stories, bringing great international content to our subscribers, and leveraging our scale across the global company. With seven nationalities represented, this team brings diversity, knowledge, and networks to deliver best-in-class services and content for our subscribers, enabled by commercial and technical excellence.”

For me, this wasn’t breaking news at all although it highly anticipated. Because you can’t put $2bn in an organisation and not appoint a new business strikeforce to work towards achieving the vision and the set objectives of the new owners. Also, nobody shells out that amount of money without a gameplan to play in the big league. PayTV and other unfolding new genres of entertainment are expected to rule well into the future with nuanced content delivery platform for a generation that does things on the go.

Let me observe that PayTV subscription uptake remains slow in Africa for so many reasons – challenged economies and debilitating politics, low tech rollout and cost of acquisition, insecurity, endemic poverty and regulatory challenges in the face of meddlesome governments. These factors have mostly been responsible for governments and the people wanting to fix rates in competitive markets as the reality of the pocket takes precedence over competition.

In spite of the foregoing, MultiChoice has done fairly well racking up the position of a monopoly across markets although it was beginning to experience some vengeful actions recently across some jurisdictions. By March 2025, MultiChoice had 14.5m subscribers across its Africa market, 7m in South Africa and 7.5m in the rest of Africa which includes Nigeria, a substantial market for that matter, in spite of troubling subscriber losses recently.

Canal+ comes with an even more intimidating resume – 40 years old in the media and entertainment market, 26.9m subscribers worldwide, 400m monthly active users on its video streaming platforms, 9,000 employees, generating income from 195 countries while operating directly in 52 countries. This is before MultiChoice was added to the stable as a major door to the African market.

Canal+ owns the StudioCanal which is documented as a leading film and television studio with worldwide production and distribution capabilities. With manifest achievements in this area, StudioCanal is expected to lead the content frontier on the continent and give African creatives fresh opportunities to reach the global market.

There is no doubt that Canal+ will quickly work to smoothen frayed business and regulatory relationships inherited from the acquisition of MultiChoice and settle down to delivering on its promises to inherited subscribers as well. The organisation has deep pockets, a good reach and vast experience to excel in any market and, for this reason, perhaps, did not hold anything back in rolling out a strong team.

I am sure Canal+ has been making some discreet movements without making so much noise about it. When the organisation’s team led by Mignot, who is now the new chief executive of the African operations, visited the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) on March 26, 2025, it was to discuss strategic matters and provide clarifications regarding Canal+ takeover of Multichoice in Africa, including Nigeria where the NBC is the regulator.

Details of that meeting are not available but this writer gathered that the Canal+ team assured the regulator that all their concerns would be accommodated as they formally take over the ownership and operations of MultiChoice.

Whatever would have been their discussions, let me state my claim here. Nigeria is a significant payTV market in Africa, and subscribers here don’t accommodate any condescending or sloppy treatment from any operator as evidenced in recent subscriber losses by MultiChoice. We also know our place in the sports and entertainment industries and would say without any boast here, that Nigeria built a movie industry, Nollywood, from the scratch without any external support, This has gained the attention of the global community as Nollywood features prominently in film festivals and TV programmes markets across the world, like the Cannes Film Festival where Canal+ is a major player.

The music industry is one of the most active in the world dominated by stars that have acquired global acclaim and relevance. So, one is safe here to say that Nigeria has a rambunctious but combustive entertainment sector that will provide a major honeypot for content aggregators and distributors like Canal+. Just visit any of the music streaming platforms, one will begin to understand what and how well our entertainment ambassadors are doing.

Once upon a time, M-Net had the Movie Magic Channels. The magic worked and it still works. So at the time that it lost the Premiership rights which was a major cash cow for the organisation, oh! we love football here, winning an Olympic Gold in 1996 and several continental and other international trophies, MultiChoice introduced the Africa Movie Magic channels. This writer was reliably informed by a MultiChoice official then that the organisation didn’t lose any money; instead, there was subscriber growth and they made more money on the strength of Nigerian content. We have the content here. We have creativity. And we have the talent. With the capacity of Canal+, the organisation should be able to do more in aggregating more of the creative opportunities that are available in Nigeria.

I have looked at the new team and their offices and I can say without equivocation that Canal+ is prepared to enter the market in a determined way and mend fences that had been broken. My prayer however, and I think the regulator may have made this demand, is to ensure that Nigeria plays at the highest level in terms of leadership. Canal+ should pay significant attention to the Nigerian market but with respect.