Naspers financial director Steve Pacak has said the company’s pay-TV platform MultiChoice is ready to face down the credit crunch.
“We expect the slowdown in consumer spending in South Africa to continue,” said Pacak. “This will have a dampening effect on the print sector’s advertising and circulation revenues. Conversely pay-TV has in the past proved resilient to the vagaries of the economic cycle.” Pacak said he did not expect a slowdown in Napsters’ Internet business. However, he warned that the level of competition faced by its pay-TV operator MultiChoice is expected to intensify, as new players continued to enter the market.
MultiChoice faces additional costs from licence fees following the requirement for the broadcaster to register itself in South Africa. There are also proposals to force MultiChoice to pay for the carriage of public broadcaster SABC.
The South African DTH platform grew subscriber numbers by 13% in the year ending March 31, 2008, an increase of 246,000 homes, and taking the installed base to 2.5 million.
Napsters has entered into a conditional sale of its Greek and Cypriot pay-TV business and has acquired the remaining 40% of M-Net/SuperSport.
