Léa Zouein is a senior analyst at Dataxis, specializing in market research for the technology, media, and telecommunications industry in Africa and the Middle East. She holds a master's degree in management from ESSEC Business School and a double degree from the Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan Military Academy.
At Dataxis, Léa conducts research on pay and free-to-air television distribution, OTT and video streaming, telecommunications, content, and television and broadband technologies. She writes articles on market trends and innovations and prepares panels for conferences in the regions she covers, including Nextv Series East Africa and CTV Ad Days MENA.
Can you describe Dataxis's business and the main sectors it covers?
Dataxis is a market research and event organization company based in Berlin with offices in Mauritius, Paris, and Buenos Aires. It currently operates in three sectors:
– Market research in the television, OTT, telecommunications, media, and digital sectors, covering more than 50 markets, 200 countries, and over 4,000 players.
– Organizing events bringing together experts and companies from the television, OTT, advertising (CTV Advertising), telecommunications, and retail media sectors. 26 conferences are planned for 2024
. – Advertising: setting up marketing services to generate leads by creating white papers and sending email blasts to a database of 60,000 qualified contacts.
Who are your main clients?
Dataxis's main clients are OTT platforms, audiovisual groups, television channels, telecom operators, satellite operators, technology providers (OEMs), and consulting firms.
These include Amazon Prime, Disney, Google, NBC, Sony Pictures, Nokia, Canal+, Orange, Eutelsat, SES, TV5, France 24, Euronews, and many others.
What sources do you use to feed your databases?
For quarterly and annual data, we use reports from market players: (press releases, financial reports, investor presentations, etc.). We also use reports from regulators and press articles.
We engage with market participants, customers, prospects, and stakeholders at our conferences to better understand the market.
We also monitor announcements by local authorities that may have an impact on the sectors we cover, such as the granting of licenses or the introduction of new regulations.
In addition to these sources, we are also able to conduct quantitative and qualitative research to collect and analyze consumer data.
Organizing conferences also allows us to gather information from industry experts.
This year, four events are dedicated to Sub-Saharan Africa: Nextv Series East Africa (June 25, 2024), Nextv Series Southern Africa, CTV Ad Days Africa, and Retail Media Days Africa (October 15, 2024).
Regarding ASS, which sectors of the audiovisual industry do you cover?
In Sub-Saharan Africa, we cover television distribution, OTT services, and music, and since 2002 we have been producing a number of quarterly indicators such as the number of subscribers per operator, revenues, and ARPU by technology. We make five-year forecasts by operator or platform and by country. We monitor the shareholding structure, acquisitions, and mergers; broadcasters' strategy on YouTube, advertising revenues, and public funding of free-to-air television channels. monitoring distribution partnerships between television operators, telecommunications operators, and OTT platforms; monthly analysis of each platform's content catalogs by country in terms of film and series genres/subgenres, business model (AVOD/SVOD/rental/purchase), production companies, country of origin, language, release date, budget, and box office receipts.
How do you see pay TV evolving in the United States?
By 2028, the number of pay TV subscribers is expected to increase by 1.4 times to reach 19 million. Satellite remains the most widely used technology, with 32% of pay TV subscribers.
Canal+ dominates the market with approximately 63% of the total number of pay-TV subscribers in the region. Whether via satellite, with 87% of subscribers, or digital terrestrial television, with 37% of the market share, Canal+ is consolidating its leading position in French-speaking Africa.
Nevertheless, certain players can shake up the established order. This is the case, for example, with Startimes, which has a fairly well-developed DTT offering in the region and captures 38% of the market share for this technology. Another crucial issue is the acquisition of premium content, particularly broadcasting rights for sporting events, as illustrated by Canal+'s loss of the rights to the 2022 World Cup to New World TV, a small emerging operator in Togo. This situation highlights the strategic importance of content offerings, particularly sports content, which is still very popular on the big screen.
Pay-TV operators face major challenges, such as setting affordable prices for a population with limited incomes, the need to equip households with reception equipment, the fight against piracy, and growing competition from streaming platforms (OTT).
DTT is now technically available in almost every country. Which countries have the highest level of actual equipment coverage?
Four French-speaking countries have completed their transition: Rwanda (2014), Burkina Faso (2017), Gabon, and Ivory Coast (2020). In other countries, the transition is still underway, such as in Benin, where 95% of the population was covered by the DTT network in 2021, and Senegal (92% in 2020). However, actual adoption remains low: 17% in Rwanda in 2023, 9% in Burkina Faso, and 10% in Benin.
The rollout of DTT faces several major challenges. First, the transition to digital requires significant financial resources to deploy the necessary infrastructure and provide equipment to all households, such as antennas and decoders, which generally have to be imported.
In Côte d'Ivoire, the government invested $46.5 million to complete the project. The larger the territory, the greater the infrastructure required. The lack of awareness among some viewers of what migration entails is an additional obstacle to the effective completion of the process. In some cases, the objectives of digitization may not be tangible enough to justify the purchase of a decoder for households, especially when these investments are not subsidized.
This explains why, in order to meet the deadline set by the ITU, some countries have sometimes switched off their analog signal before all TV households were equipped to receive terrestrial television. In Kenya, in English-speaking Africa, in 2015, more than 1.3 million TV households lost their access to free terrestrial television after the analog switch-off. Other countries, such as Benin, opted for a more gradual approach. The country officially launched DTT in February 2023, after building enough infrastructure to cover 96% of the population. The country also announced that it would not switch off the analog signal until DTT was fully understood and adopted by its population. The authorities finally plan to switch off analog signals for good by August 2024.
The merger between CANAL+ and Multichoice is taking shape. What do you think this will change in French-speaking Africa, but also in English-speaking Africa?
This deal would create a pan-African television giant, controlling around 60% of pay-TV subscriptions in the region. While Canal+'s position would remain stable in French-speaking Africa, where it already holds 63% of the market, its influence would expand considerably in English-speaking Africa, rising from less than 1% currently to 60% of the market share. Canal+ would thus gain a virtual monopoly on pay-TV offerings in sub-Saharan Africa, even though the French group does not plan to phase out Multichoice's brands.
The new entity would be large enough to compete with major international streaming platforms such as Netflix and Disney+. This consolidation would increase investment in local content production, thereby strengthening Africa's offering. The existing collaboration between Canal+ and Showmax, notably with the success of the series "Spinners," the first African series selected for competition at Canneseries in 2023, already illustrates this potential.
The merger would also give Showmax the opportunity to expand its catalog by combining its current offering with that of Canal+, as well as to broaden its audience beyond the African continent by leveraging the French group's global reach. Showmax and Netflix currently dominate the market with 60% of OTT subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The group formed by Canal+ and Multichoice would thus benefit from a stronger position to negotiate exclusive rights and develop attractive content.
However, this consolidation raises questions about competition in the region. The creation of a virtual monopoly could impact subscription prices and put small local operators in difficulty, forcing them to consolidate or refocus on more specialized offerings or niche content in order to survive.
Although South African legislation currently poses obstacles to this acquisition, its completion would mark a major step forward in the evolution of the audiovisual sector in sub-Saharan Africa. The new entity, potentially listed in Europe and Johannesburg, could breathe new life into the market and stimulate further consolidation in response to this increased competition.
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