Nigeria lost about 1.4m MultiChoice subscriptions in 2 years. Is there a market for cheaper TV?
MultiChoice's Nigerian base fell by an estimated 1.39m active subscriptions between FY2023 and FY2025. By October 2026 GOtv advertised a N1,900 entry package. STATART sets out what research would show who left, why, and whether cheaper legal options could win them back.
MultiChoice's Rest of Africa business, which includes Nigeria, had 9.3m subscribers in FY2023, 8.1m in FY2024 and 7.5m in FY2025. MultiChoice attributed about 77% of that 1.8m fall to Nigeria, Nairametrics reported from the company's FY2025 results presentation. STATART arithmetic: 1.8m × 77% = about 1.39m, which the presentation rounds to about 1.4m.
That figure is an estimated net reduction in active subscriptions between 2 dates. It isn't a count of cancellations, and it isn't a count of households or unique customers. It nets off new sign-ups and reactivations, and one home can hold more than one subscription. What it does show is a large fall in paid MultiChoice TV in Nigeria. This piece asks whether that fall points to a market for cheaper legal TV, and treats that as a research question, not a proven opportunity.
Market snapshot
- Location or segment: paid MultiChoice TV in Nigeria (DStv and GOtv), and the alternatives available to people who stop paying for it
- Type of market: home entertainment and live sport: pay-TV, free-to-air and viewing centres
- Size: an estimated net fall of about 1.39m active subscriptions, FY2023 to FY2025 (STATART calculation from MultiChoice's regional figures)
- Main buyers: households and individuals; MultiChoice publishes no profile of who left
- Main products or spend lines: monthly packages, decoders and viewing centre tickets
- How good the data are: good on MultiChoice's own subscriber totals; absent on who left, why, and what they watch now
What the numbers reveal
MultiChoice's own FY2025 results put Rest of Africa subscribers at 8,078,000 in March 2024 and 7,487,000 in March 2025, a 7% fall. These are regional figures. MultiChoice doesn't publish a separate Nigerian subscriber series, which is why the Nigerian figure here is an estimate.
Source: MultiChoice FY2025 results; Nairametrics for FY2023. Regional data, not a Nigerian series. MultiChoice attributes about 77% of the fall to Nigeria. Chart: STATART Insights and Analytics
See the numbers
| Subscriptions | |
|---|---|
| FY2023 | 9.3m |
| FY2024 | 8.1m |
| FY2025 | 7.5m |
The decline came alongside repeated price rises in April 2023, November 2023, May 2024 and March 2025, and alongside falling household purchasing power. The data can't separate the effect of price from income, content, service quality or anything else.
By October 2026, GOtv was advertising lower-priced entry packages. Smallie and Jinja appear on GOtv's official package page, at N1,900 and N3,900 a month according to price listings published by Legit.ng on 24 October. These are October 2026 prices; this piece doesn't establish what the same packages cost during FY2023 to FY2025. From 5 November, DStv moves to new tiers: Starter at N6,000 a month, Select at N11,000 and Sports at N21,000, ThisDay reported. MultiChoice has announced a revised 4-tier GOtv structure alongside the DStv changes scheduled for 5 November 2026; GOtv's comparison page lists the new tiers from GOtv Easy at N4,000 to GOtv Sports at N21,000. However, the availability of existing packages such as Smallie and Jinja after the transition requires confirmation.
Source: Legit.ng (GOtv listings, 24 October 2026); ThisDay (DStv tariffs, 28 October 2026). Packages differ in channel access, so prices are not like-for-like. Chart: STATART Insights and Analytics
See the numbers
| Monthly price | |
|---|---|
| GOtv Smallie (current) | N1,900 |
| GOtv Jinja (current) | N3,900 |
| DStv Starter (from 5 Nov) | N6,000 |
| DStv Select (from 5 Nov) | N11,000 |
| DStv Sports (from 5 Nov) | N21,000 |
MultiChoice's Nigerian subscription base declined substantially between FY2023 and FY2025. By October 2026, GOtv was advertising an entry package at N1,900 a month, while DStv had announced a revised package structure for November. Whether these lower-priced options can attract or retain price-sensitive viewers remains an open question. The constraint on demand could be price, content, the value people see in the service, purchasing power, or something else, and the data don't say which.
Why this might be an untapped market
The apparent gap is a large group of people who used to pay for MultiChoice TV and no longer do. Nobody has published where they went: some may have stopped watching pay-TV, some may watch free-to-air, a viewing centre or someone else's subscription, and some may use unlicensed streams.
MultiChoice says there's unlicensed demand for its content. Atinuke Ngozi Babatunde, MultiChoice Nigeria's executive head of content and channels for West Africa, said Big Brother Naija Season 10 was "illegally streamed more than five million times," Pulse reported. That's a company claim with no published method. It counts streams, not people, and it doesn't show how many viewers were former subscribers or whether they'd pay for a legal alternative.
Ideas worth testing
Cheaper legal packages built around what people watch. DStv's N6,000 Starter, which carries 1 Premier League match a week, is a live test. Whether it brings back former subscribers after 5 November is the first real evidence the market will produce.
Viewing centres as a separate opportunity. Football viewing centres charged N200 to N500 a match in August, Cowrywise found. There's no published data on how many centres operate, how many former subscribers use them, or what they earn. Any business model here depends on commercial licensing for public screening, which differs from a residential subscription, and on power and operating costs.
Risks and limits
The 1.39m figure is a net change in subscriptions derived from a regional total, so it's an estimate, and it doesn't measure households. Pay-TV is hard to enter because content rights, especially for live sport, are expensive. Piracy figures are company claims, not independent measurement.
What would test the hypothesis
- Which consumers left: by income, city and the package they held
- Why they left: price, content, service value, purchasing power or something else
- What they watch now, and how: free-to-air, viewing centres, other people's subscriptions or unlicensed streams
- What they can afford, and whether N1,900 to N6,000 a month is within reach
- Whether a legal alternative could keep them profitably, after content and licensing costs
MultiChoice's Nigerian subscriber base declined substantially between FY2023 and FY2025. The available data don't establish how many unique households were affected, where former subscribers went, or whether they would pay for an alternative. That leaves a potentially valuable market research question, rather than a demonstrated commercial opportunity.
Related: DStv Sports will cost N21,000. How much is live football worth to Nigerian viewers?
Sources: MultiChoice, FY2025 results announcement · Nairametrics, MultiChoice Nigeria subscriber losses · GOtv Nigeria, current packages · GOtv Nigeria, new tiers · Legit.ng, current GOtv and DStv prices · ThisDay, new DStv packages · Cowrywise, viewing centre prices · Pulse, BBNaija piracy claim
