South Africa’s loss-making public broadcaster surprised everyone on Thursday when it launched its long-gestating streamer, naming it SABC+ with a target of 2 million users over the next year.
The SABC is taking over and rebranding the TelkomONE streamer from the country’s parastatal telco Telkom, launching with its content from its linear TV bouquet of SABC1, SABC2, SABC3, SABC News and SABC Sports, its 19 radio stations, as well as 2,000 hours of other programming in a carousel of on-demand library content.
SABC+ is late to the streaming party in what is already Africa’s most developed and fiercely contested video streaming region.
The new platform will face off against global services ranging from Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+ and Prime Video, alongside regional streamers like pan-African pay-TV operator MultiChoice’s Showmax and eMedia’s eVOD, all battling it out for subscriber growth and share.
The launch comes over a month since the broadcaster began operating without a board. PvNew understands a new board is still not in place.
Following Thursday’s announcement, SABC COO Ian Plaatjes sat down with PvNew for a wide-ranging interview.
Why launch SABC+ now and not in 2023?
We have been planning to launch an OTT platform; we were in the process of reissuing a tender. Telkom made a decision to discontinue their platform and offered us to take TelkomONE over as is, basically lock, stock and barrel. That created the sense of urgency in why we went live now with SABC+.
What is the deal worth?
Telkom had a license and because they were going to discontinue it over a period of time and phase it out, they offered it to us to take over. We’ve got a license for one year. We’ve got quite an aggressive plan to roll SABC+ out to 2 million users within a year period and then port everything over to whatever back-end platform we’re going to be selecting.
How many users does SABC+ inherit?
Just over 150,000.
You mention the urgency of when the license became available. How urgent has it been for the SABC to invest in and get a streaming service up and running?
It’s been imperative to go live this year. Unfortunately, we had to withdraw the original tender and we were going to reissue it — which would have delayed the go-live. We’re losing about 80% of our revenue from linear TV to digital and we needed to arrest that. So this is a revenue protection strategy but also a revenue growth strategy. The timing of SABC+ is absolutely perfect because we’ve also got FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 starting in three days’ time and we’ve got those rights. It’s one of those divine moments: you couldn’t ask for a better time.
The linear ratings of the SABC’s channels are in decline. Is there a fear SABC+ would cannibalize viewership?
Definitely not cannibalize but migrate. What we don’t want to do is lose our linear audience. We actually want to provide them with an alternative viewing option of our content. Instead of losing them, we’re migrating them.
What will SABC+’s operational expenditure be?
It’s very difficult to say because we’ve inherited the platform as is from Telkom. All the content that’s there will stay on. When we go and buy rights, we always take into account streaming rights as well. So for us, it’s not going to be an additional cost from a content perspective. Going forward there will be some strategy around additional channels on SABC+ which might be an additional cost since we might not have that same channel on linear. Every single channel we launch, whether it’s a permanent channel on SABC+ or a pop-up, will be at break-even or profitable. We would not be running any of those at a loss.
What broadly is the SABC OTT strategy?
This is obviously the launch phase. If you look at what we have inherited, TelkomONE had an SVOD service. As and when those commitments run out, we will certainly change that into an AVOD service. Sport is going to be big on OTT for us, specifically community-based sports.
What represents success?
For the first year, we’ve got quite an aggressive target. We’re setting a target of 1 million subscribers or users within the first year. However, we have set ourselves a stretch target to take that to 2 million. A success factor will be 1 million; 1 to 2 million would certainly be our expectation.
When would SABC+ become profitable?
Because we’re taking it over and some cost has already been borne by someone else, it is actually going to be possible from day one. The scatter ad market is there already, the ability to monetize the platform and put ads on there is there from day one so it’s possible immediately.
only 18% of TV households on the SABC books pay their TV license fee. Why is it not a requirement that a valid license number is needed for SABC+ access?
In further phases, TV license validations are on the cards but as an incentive, not a stick. It’s not going to prevent you from watching but it will incentivize you for doing additional stuff.
Would SABC+ always have been the name?
We obviously started some time back already because we knew we were going to have our own OTT in the market. We launched a competition where people could make name recommendations. We had a committee and we tested some of the names in a panel to understand consumer views. We tested it with agencies as well. The consensus view was SABC+.
