The COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to stay at home and this means they have to find new ways to entertain themselves.
One of the ways people entertain themselves is by login into streaming sites. One of the popular streaming sites in the region is Showmax and they are now showing an increase in traffic due to this situation.
Showmax says that the number of active users on the platform has risen by roughly 50% compared to the pre-crisis peak in early March. This is due to the current lockdown situation in South Africa as well as the general restriction of movement employed in other countries like Kenya.
Showmax also shared some interesting insights about viewership. They have a metric called play event which measures when someone clicks play on a piece of content on Showmax. It usually follows a pattern where viewership grows to a Sunday peak.
However, Shomax noticed in late February and by 15th March, the number of play events was more than 20% higher than the month before. They also noticed that traffic this past weekend was more than double the peak viewership in mid-February.
These interesting insights come after Showmax confirmed that they were capping their streaming quality due to the increased traffic. Over time, they have added more content like live news streaming, live sports and they also update current American TV shows like Westworld and the likes. In Kenya, they had offers like the 3-month subscription for the price of one which ended towards the end of March which was a great deal to snap.
