DStv is not competing with Kwese TV, it’s competing with the Internet

DStv just announced that it will be reducing the prices for its subscriptions.

When I read that news on Techzim, I thought that this was in response to Kwese TV and you might have thought so too.

Well, they might have been responding to Kwese TV since the satellite service was recently launched in Zimbabwe (then banned, then launched again and banned again) also and some people even started enjoying it.

What if DStv is not really competing with Kwese TV?

DStv is or should actually be focusing on competing with the Internet.

Kwese TV has even realised that their competition isn’t other satellite services like DStv as they have launched Kwese Play. Kwese Play is a streaming service, just like Netflix, which allows you to pay a certain fee and stream different shows online.

Likewise, DStv’s competition is other services like Kwese Play. Yes, Dstv has a streaming service called Showmax which kind of competes with Kwese Play but more importantly, their competition goes beyond that as their direct competition should be the internet itself and not Kwese Play.

Take a look at how the internet has democratized broadcasting. For example, in August, Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor had their famous money fight. To watch the fight, it would have cost you an arm and a leg if the internet didn’t exist. Fortunately, the internet exists and even people in Zimbabwe were able to watch the fight.

The money fight was broadcast on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter’s Periscope as they provide live streaming services. You see that’s the power of the internet. Today, anyone can start a show on Facebook and if it’s good enough, people will watch it and the person won’t have to do a lot of marketing to even achieve that.

People are already using social media sites like Facebook so the content creator can ride on that existing platform. Since people are already using it, they won’t have to pay extra to access any entertainment. So in reality, all these platforms are powered by the internet and that’s their real competition.

To some degree, DStv knows that hence they have Showmax but even that isn’t enough anymore as we saw that anyone who has a Facebook account can broadcast the same entertainment that they have so they lose their selling point which for so long has been that they show X or Y because they have the rights to that game or show.

Apart from that people can now just download all the series or movies they’d like to watch even though it is not legal. I mean, if you watch Game of Thrones, did you watch the most recent season on DStv? Probably not, a popular torrent site Pirate Bay was even taken offline due to the demand of the TV show.

So for DStv to survive, it has to beat the internet or at least leverage it to provide value to people who have so many entertainment options in front of them. Do you prefer to watch satellite TV or streaming the shows? Do you think DStv has a chnace to compete with these internet services? What do you think it should do?