Would Comcast's NBCUniversal Have Been A Better Suitor To MultiChoice?

Since late 2025, Canal+ managed to complete it's acquisition of MultiChoice and have begun slashing costs at the company. This is the norm for a majority of mergers and acquisitions and consumers have already seen the after effects.

M-Net had a licensing deal with Warner Bros. Discovery for titles like Penguin, The Peacemaker and Euphoria. In their last carriage deal, Canal+ let that deal die as it retains Cartoon Network and Warner's other cable networks.

Even SuperSport wasn't immune to costs as the merger lead to the loss of World Darts Championship, Winter Olympics and Philly's Games.

Showmax is expected to suffer the most from this ordeal as Canal+ admitted that the streamer has a commercial failure and only worsening MultiChoice's finances. Since last year, they've been engaging with Comcast about it's viability.

NBCUniversal bought a stake in the streamer a few years ago and this led to various enhancements for Showmax. This included additional catalogue from NBC, Telemundo Studios, Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.

Post the takeover, MultiChoice and NBCUniversal had also been locked in to various partnerships including that of Universal+ on DStv Stream. They've even provided Universal TV, Studio Universal and Telemundo to DStv consumers.

Some outlets even speculated that a merger between NBCUniversal and MultiChoice was another endeavour on the cards. Although we're less likely to see how this would have turned out the outcome would probably have been different.

NBCUniversal spun off majority of its cable networks under a separate company, Versant. For all anyone knows, this probably would have been the outcome for M-Net's local portfolio either that or sale and best guess on a buyer would be Canal+.

Canal+ has a 30+ year presence in the African space and have been growing their portfolio in the market and prior to MultiChoice they bought Nigeria's ROK Studios and Rwanda's Zacu TV. So it would only seem logical for them to snatch these assets.

NBCUniversal would probably retain M-Net and likely make it an equivalent the main NBC network in America. Another brand they would likely keep is SuperSport and maybe all if not most of these recent cuts would have been avoided.

As for DStv, this would probably go 50/50 while Canal+ retains MultiChoice's entire operations. NBCUniversal could have looked into shutting down some of MultiChoice's operations or keeping the profitable ones as seen with Sky in Germany.