South African public broadcaster launches SABC+ Streamer, targets 2 million subscribers by end of 2023

South Africa's loss-making public broadcaster surprised everyone on Thursday by launching its long-running streamer gestation, naming it SABC+ with a goal of 2 million users over the next year.

SABC supports and rebrands the TelkomONE streamer from parastatal telecommunications company Telkom, launched with its content from its linear TV bouquet of SABC1, SABC2, SABC3, SABC News and SABC Sports, its 19 radio stations, plus 2,000 hours of other programming in an on-demand library content carousel.

SABC+ is late to the streaming party in what is already the hottest video streaming region developed and most fiercely contested in Africa.

The new platform will compete against global services ranging from Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+ and Prime Video, alongside from regional streamers like Pan-African pay-TV operator MultiChoice's Showmax and eVOD from eMedia, all vying for growth and subscriber share.

The launch comes over a month since the streamer started running without a board. Variety understands that a new council is still not in place.

Following Thursday's announcement, SABC COO Ian Plaatjes sat down with Variety for an in-depth interview.

Why launch SABC+ now and not in 2023?

We planned to launch an OTT platform; we were in the process of relaunching a call for tenders. Telkom made the decision to stop its platform and offered to take over TelkomONE as is, essentially lock, stock and barrel. It created a sense of urgency in why we went live now with SABC+.

What's the deal worth?

Telkom had a license and because they were going to discontinue it over a period of time and remove it gradually, they offered it to us to take over. We have a license for one year. We have a pretty aggressive plan to deploy SABC+ to 2 million users over a one-year period and then transfer everything to the back-end platform we're going to select.

How many users does SABC+ inherit?

Just over 150,000.

You mention the urgency of when the license became available. How urgent was it for SABC to invest and set up a streaming service?

It was imperative to upload this year. Unfortunately, we had to withdraw the initial RFP and were going to reissue it, which would have delayed commissioning. We're losing about 80% of our revenue from linear TV to digital and we had to stop that. So it is a revenue protection strategy but also a revenue growth strategy. The timing of SABC+ is absolutely perfect as we also have the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 starting in three days and we have those rights. It's one of those divine moments: you couldn't ask for a better moment.

Linear SABC channel ratings are down. Is there a fear of SABC+ cannibalizing the audience?

Certainly 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 migrate them.

What will SABC+'s operational expenses be?

It's very hard to say because we inherited the platform as is from Telkom. All the content there will remain. When we go to buy rights, we always take streaming rights into account as well. So for us, it will not be an additional cost from a content point of view. Going forward, there will be a strategy around additional channels on SABC+ that could...