👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Safaricom ports to South Africa

If you paid for DStv this month expecting to watch the new season of House of the Dragon, we have some bad news. 

Canal+, the MultiChoice owner that operates DStv, is playing a different game of thrones. The payTV operator said it renewed its channels agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery, which runs CNN, Discovery, and Cartoon Network. But the separate deal that brings HBO’s blockbuster shows to your TV screens has expired.

If this feels like déjà vu, it probably is. Remember December 31, 2025? MultiChoice was walking on a similar tightrope when its parent company Canal+ was renegotiating licencing deals for about 12 channels, including CNN and Cartoon Network, to remain on DStv. It got that deal over the line at the eleventh hour. HBO, however, was negotiating under a different contract, and that problem appears to have finally caught up with it.

Explain content leasing like I’m new here: TV channels and TV shows are often licenced separately. A broadcaster can secure the right to carry CNN or Cartoon Network without automatically securing the rights to HBO’s premium catalogue. Canal+ renewed one agreement, but the one covering prestige HBO programming, including House of the Dragon, The White Lotus, and The Last of Us, has lapsed.

Canal+ has stopped short of saying whether negotiations are still underway or whether HBO content is gone for good. Either way, DStv subscribers are discovering that renewing the pipes doesn’t necessarily mean renewing what flows through them.

Is it all part of the plan? Maybe. Canal+ wants DStv to evolve from a traditional pay-TV operator into an entertainment aggregator, as Group CEO Maxime Saada previously said. It already bundles Netflix into several Francophone African countries, and is steering subscribers towards DStv Stream. 

But that strategy only works if the hub keeps attracting the biggest shows. Losing HBO chips away at one of the few reasons many customers still pay for premium television. Whether Canal+ chose that trade-off or simply couldn’t avoid it is the question.

Who loses? DStv Premium subscribers. They are clearly not getting the premium treatment of seeing Emma D’Arcy tear it up as Rhaenyra in the show’s third season—at least not on DStv. HBO has been a cornerstone of M-Net’s premium offering for more than a decade; replacing prestige television is far harder than replacing another lifestyle channel. 

Who wins here? Netflix, Prime Video, and whichever service eventually lands HBO’s African rights. Every premium show that leaves DStv gives viewers another reason to ask whether paying R699 ($43) a month for traditional pay-TV still makes sense.