by Thinus Ferreira
South Africa's public broadcaster hopes to earn R37.5 million from its just-launched video streaming service SABC+ during its first financial year in operation, with the streamer adding around 15 000 new users per day.
SABC+ launched on 17 November after it took over the TelkomONE streaming service and rebranded it and which Telkom decided to offload to the public broadcaster, inheriting just over 150 000 existing users.
The SABC wants to scale up the number of users to between 1 and 2 million by November 2023 but will have to work hard as a late market entrant to compete against the likes of Netflix SA, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+ and MultiChoice's video streamer Showmax.
Ian Plaatjes, SABC COO, told parliament this week that SABC+ is growing "an average of 15 000 new subscribers per day".
The SABC hopes to earn R6 million from SABC+ during the third quarter of its 2022/2023 financial year, rising to R31.5 million during the fourth quarter of the financial year, for a total of R37.5 million.
