In an interview with TechCentral on Thursday, MultiChoice South Africa will raise the prices of all its DStv bouquets with effect from 1 April 2021, the company’s chief operating officer, Simon Camerer, announced.
Most packages will see price rises below the expected inflation of consumer prices (CPI) for 2021, with the Premium bouquet, which has been under pressure in recent years due to the weak economy and the proliferation of alternative streaming services, seeing its price rise by just 1.2 percent (see table below).
The greater price increase of the bouquets is received by DStv Family, with the price increasing to R295/month by 5.7 percent above the expected CPI.
“We did everything we could to keep rates under control. You’re looking at a 2.4 percent gain on a weighted average basis,” Camerer said. Increased costs and volatility of currencies-MultiChoice buys a large portion of its foreign currency content-required rises, he said, but the business has worked hard to mitigate the effect by taking the average price increases to well below CPI.
DStv price increases in 2021
| Old price | New price | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DStv Premium | R819 | R829 | 1.22% |
| DStv Compact Plus | R529 | R539 | 1.89% |
| DStv Compact | R399 | R409 | 2.51% |
| DStv Family | R279 | R295 | 5.73% |
| DStv Access | R110 | R115 | 4.54% |
| BoxOffice rentals | R35 | R40 | 14.29% |
| PVR access fee | R100 | R105 | 5% |
The largest price rise is for DStv BoxOffice movie rentals, where a 14.3 percent increase in the R5 increase per title to R40 works out.
Camerer emphasized that if they sign up for a longer-term contract rather than being on a month-to-month payment schedule, customers will get better rates and save on decoder and installation costs.
