The China sponsored StarTimes Nigeria has introduced new pay-per-day (PPD) and pay-per-week subscription fee options for StarTimes Nigeria subscribers in the face of increasing competition in the West-African country's pay-TV market.
Saying "entertainment just got subsidised" StarTimes Nigeria announced a new payment option whereby subscribers can get access to 40 StarTimes channels for N300 (R11.27) for a week, or all StarTimes channels for N60 (R2.25) per day.
The new pay-per-day (PPD) and pay-per week (PPW) StarTimes payment plans will become available from 1 November 2017, with payments that will be possible both online and offline.
StarTimes Nigeria didn't release any statement to the media but the new payment offerings are part of the squeeze all pay-TV operators in Nigeria are facing in the fight to find new subscribers and to combat churn.
Competition in Nigeria's pay-TV sphere has been heating up between StarTimes Nigeria and MultiChoice Nigeria's DStv especially as the Nigerian currency, the naira has been tanking, as well as the entrance of the new wannabe rival TStv, that doesn't have decoders available and has been lying to consumers about TV channel carriage agreements it doesn't have.
StarTimes Nigeria's new "pay-per-day" and "pay-per-week" concept is interesting since pay-TV operators who bill subscribers for content costs they themselves have to pay, don't have the luxury of paying for that content "per day" or "per week".
In that sense, StarTimes Nigeria's very on the nose "entertainment just got subsidised" commercial comment is actually highly accurate - StarTimes Nigeria is the one doing the subsidising, since it will StarTimes Nigeria losing money.
StarTimes Nigeria,like all satellite pay-TV providers, have to source and pay for content in and as package deals, output deals, and over much longer contract periods, like for a year or in multi-year channel carriage deals and other content contracts.
Channel and content providers don't do "pay-per-week" and "pay-per-day" contracts with operators like StarTimes Nigeria, so it's StarTimes Nigeria itself that's breaking down the decoding and access to customers in smaller day and week bits.
