Netflix’s massive $72 billion bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery has sent shockwaves through Africa’s pay-TV market, especially for MultiChoice.
The deal, announced last Friday, immediately raised alarms because Warner Bros. Discovery is MultiChoice’s biggest supplier of premium international content. And with negotiations already strained, this takeover has thrown DStv and Showmax into their biggest content crisis in years.
Before Netflix swooped in, MultiChoice had already warned subscribers that 12 popular channels, including CNN, Cartoon Network, HGTV, Food Network, TNT Africa, and Investigation Discovery, could disappear at the end of December. Talks with Warner Bros. Discovery hit a wall over renewal fees, and under new owner Canal+, MultiChoice has been aggressively cutting costs. The last-minute negotiation marathon continued until late Thursday, December 4, 2025, but Netflix’s announcement changed the entire playing field, per MyBroadband.
What makes things worse for DStv and Showmax is not just the potential loss of channels but what Netflix stands to gain. If the deal is cleared, likely in the third quarter of 2026, Netflix will fold Warner Bros. and HBO’s massive content library into its platform. That means everything from Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, and The Big Bang Theory to House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, and the entire DC Universe could become Netflix exclusives. These are titles that currently define Showmax’s premium appeal.
While Netflix plans to spin off Warner’s linear TV business into a separate public company called Discovery Global, which may give MultiChoice a shot at retaining some live channels, the real fight is over on-demand streaming. Showmax’s Best of HBO section alone had 191 series as of December 7. Losing even half of that catalogue would dramatically shrink its value. And DStv is already set to lose four other channels — BET Africa, CBS AMC Networks, CBS Justice, and MTV Base — by year-end due to Paramount Africa shutting down.
