A Ghanaian household that pays GH₵563 a month to watch the Premier League on DStv will pay GH₵250 from 5 November. That's a 55.6% cut, and it isn't a festive promotion. MultiChoice Ghana's country chief executive, Alex Okyere, described the new line-up as a permanent restructuring.
The company unveiled it in Accra on Monday at a briefing held with the communications ministry. 4 packages will replace the current 6. Starter costs GH₵50 a month for 90 channels. Select costs GH₵100 for 123 channels. Sports, at GH₵250, adds football, Premier League and Champions League included, on top of everything in Starter and Select. Ultimate, at GH₵570, carries the premium sport: Formula One, golf, tennis, MotoGP and rugby.
Where the money moves
Set against the old menu, every tier gets cheaper. Ultimate costs 33.3% less than the GH₵854 Premium package it replaces. Select, at GH₵100, is 46.8% below the GH₵188 Family package (STATART calculation).
Over 12 months, a Premium subscriber who moves to Ultimate keeps GH₵3,408. A Compact viewer who moves to Sports keeps GH₵3,756 (STATART calculation). For a lot of Accra homes, that's real money.
Look at the bottom of the ladder too. Starter works out at about GH₵0.56 per channel a month, Select at about GH₵0.81 (STATART calculation). Paying 2x to move from Starter to Select buys 33 more channels, a 36.7% bump. Football is the real hook, though: the step from Select to Sports costs another GH₵150.
The rival is a pirate box
The timing isn't subtle. A crackdown on illegal streams and "ghost boxes" is planned from the same 5 November date, pending legal clearance, and a committee will review DStv's prices as exchange rates move. Cheap pirate football has been the competitor no pay-TV price list could match. MultiChoice is now betting a GH₵250 bundle gets close enough.
Nigerian viewers, who watch the same football rights in naira, have reason to follow this. If a 55.6% cut wins Ghanaian households back from pirate boxes, the playbook can travel. If it only shrinks revenue per subscriber, it won't.
Cheaper football should pull viewers back in Accra and Kumasi, but MultiChoice hasn't said how many extra subscribers it needs to make up for cuts of 33.3% to 55.6%. Its first subscriber count after 5 November will tell us whether the bet paid.
Figures are as reported at the time of writing. STATART news is written by Frank Brother (Markets), Christina Amgbari (Insights) and Ebipadei Joseph (Lifestyle), and checked before publication.