DStv appears to be preparing a major shake-up of how it sells sports. A new five-tier streaming lineup is set to launch in South Africa on September 17, built around Starter, Select, Sports, Movies & Series, and Premium packages.
The Sports tier is pegged at R399 a month (roughly KES 2,900), sitting apart from DStv’s usual bundles that force sports fans to pay for entertainment channels they rarely watch.
Decoder subscriptions won’t be affected, which suggests DStv is treating this as a digital experiment rather than a wholesale pricing overhaul.
Eyewitness News and BusinessTech have reported details of the new packages and pricing, although DStv has yet to officially confirm them. The reported lineup and prices therefore remain subject to final confirmation ahead of the September 17 launch.
The Sports tier itself carries the most detail so far and is built around Premier League football, UEFA competitions, cricket, and Mzansi Magic, with MMovies+ thrown in as a small entertainment sweetener rather than a full movies bundle.
The impression is that DStv appears to be building a package for households that want top-flight football and cricket without paying for the local drama and lifestyle channels that come standard in Select or Premium.
The concept of standalone sports streaming already exists in Kenya, but DStv hasn’t yet packaged it as a dedicated sports-only tier.
DStv Kenya already lets subscribers stream every package except Lite as a standalone product, with pricing running from KES 750 for Lite up to KES 11,700 for Premium.
What’s missing is a sports-only option cheap enough to compete with the KES 4,200 Compact tier, which currently carries the Premier League, FA Cup, and Carabao Cup.
Kenya’s infrastructure suggests there could be strong demand once South Africa’s numbers come in. The Communications Authority’s latest sector report shows more than 60 million mobile broadband subscriptions, with 4G accounting for 84.8% of connections.
Mobile money subscriptions have also reached 48.6 million, giving Kenya the connectivity and payment infrastructure needed for a streaming-only sports service.
READ: Canal+ Pulls SuperSport Rights Decisions From Africa to Paris
The bigger story behind the redesign is Canal+. Since taking effective control of MultiChoice in September 2025, the French media group has been signaling it wants a simpler, more repeatable product structure across a combined base of more than 40 million subscribers in nearly 70 countries.
Canal+ can use a common sports and entertainment bundle as a template, adjusting it for each market. This would allow the company to launch faster instead of creating a separate package for every country.
MultiChoice‘s results, including a ZAR 0.8 billion (~ KES 6.43 billion) trading loss in the rest of Africa and an 11% drop in subscription revenue, suggest that any Kenya launch would likely start as a controlled pilot around November or December 2026.
It is unlikely to simply copy the South African pricing.
