by Thinus Ferreira
The Sunday World newspaper, citing sources, reports that Canal+ has decided to dump the DStv Delicious International Food & Music Festival as part of Canal+'s drastic and aggressive ongoing cost-cutting at MultiChoice.
The DStv Delicious Festival, that's been often-criticised in past editions, started in 2013 and held its 12th one in September at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit.
DStv Delicious as a subscriber retention, potential upsell and marketing event, focused on the DStv mass-market and combined music acts, including international artists, with a food marketplace as a culinary showcase, combined with a fashion display component that involved local South African fashion designers.
Canal+ is now removing DStv as naming-rights sponsor with multiple sources who said that MultiChoice is done with its sponsorship of DStv Delicious.
Canal+ said that "Since taking ownership of MultiChoice last year, Canal+ has put in place a strategic plan to ensure a sustainable future for the company, putting it back on a pathway towards growth. This is essential to ensure that consumers are able to continue to enjoy compelling local and international content on leading platforms and that we can continue to support South Africa’s creative industries."
"We are proud to work with a broad ecosystem of partners, including SMES and local production houses, which are critical to our business and to the growth of the creative sector across Africa."
"We remain committed to the undertakings we made during the acquisition process and are focused on building a strong, sustainable business to the benefit of South African consumers and creatives alike.
TVwithThinus reached out to Canal+ Africa on Sunday morning, asking in a media query for comment about ending its sponsorship of the DStv Delicious Festival. Comment will be added here when received.
Earlier this year, insiders told TVwithThinus that the sponsorships of all arts and cultural festivals that used to be sponsored by MultiChoice and M-Net channels like kykNET and Mzansi Magic, as well as the money that went from MultiChoice to support film festivals like the Silwerskermfees and Joburg Film Festival are going to come under serious threat due to the Canal+ takeover.
The French firm is busy with an aggressive cost-cutting strategy at MultiChoice and doing away with anything deemed "non-core".
Canal+, which has shut down MultiChoice's loss-making Showmax streaming service, aims to achieve annual cost-cutting of over €400 million (R7.5 billion) by 2030 following its acquisition of MultiChoice.
Canal+ Africa is offering voluntary severance packages to MultiChoice staffers and will hire 1 000 new sales staff across the sub-Saharan Africa to drive DStv decoder sales and DStv subscription uptake.
Earlier this month, David Mignot, Canal+ Africa CEO, said that Canal+ Africa will reduce its reliance on international vendors and content, continue to do local content investment and slash hardware costs like DStv decoder prices to try and reverse subscriber decline.
David Mignot said the 17 different pay-TV packages offered by MultiChoice are too many and confusing to subscribers, which he described as "absurd complexity" and will be reduced, and that MultiChoice has 5 different DStv decoders in the market just in South Africa and that will be reduced as well.
David Mignot said Canal+ will renegotiate contracts with 90% of international vendors to reduce costs, targeting suppliers in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, including technology and content providers.
These savings are designed to fund subsidies for DStv decoders and finance local content.
The HBO series from Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has for instance already disappeared from the M-Net (DStv 101) channel and Warner Bros. films from the M-Net Movies channels on DStv, after Canal+ refused to pay WBD for a continuation of the decades-long contract to have premium content like Game of Thrones shown on M-Net.
