• BritBox is shutting down in South Africa after just under three years of operations.
• The service apparently had “thousands and thousands” of local subscribers in 2022.
• In 2023, BritBox struck a deal to be hosted on MultiChoice’s streaming platforms.

Update:

MultiChoice has told Hypertext that due to BritBox ceasing operations in South Africa, it will no longer be available on the Explora Ultra and Streama devices.

Original article follows:

After just under three years streaming in South Africa, BritBox, the streaming platform that features content from the BBC and ITV will be shutting down locally.

August will be BritBox’s last month in South Africa, after which viewers will no longer be able to stream content on the platform. The shuttering follows the killing of BritBox as a standalone streaming service in the United Kingdom, following BBC purchasing full ownership of the platform from ITV earlier this year.

“Sadly BritBox will be closing. Subscribers can watch all their favourite shows until August,” reads a statement issued by BritBox representatives in South Africa, seen by local blogger TV with Thinus.

Internationally, BritBox is said to have had over 2.6 million subscribers in 2022, but exact statistics for South Africa have not been revealed. Reemah Sakaan, BritBox International CEO, said a year after BritBox’s local launch that the service had “thousands and thousands” of users and that the company was pleased with its local progress.

But that was before the local streaming situation became a whole lot more competitive. With the likes of Disney+ launching in South Africa a year after BritBox, Netflix doubling down on swathes of locally influenced content and more recently with the relaunch of local streaming platform ShowMax, it is possible that the service could not maintain a sizeable market share.

It is possible that viewers will still be able to watch BritBox content through a deal the platform struck with MultiChoice last year in June.

“Through this new partnership with MultiChoice we will bring BritBox’s unparalleled Original series to DStv subscribers across South Africa, express from the UK, as well as the largest collection of British programming, all in one place,” Sakaan said at the time.

We have reached out to MultiChoice to ask if this will be the case, or if the platform’s departure will mean that it will also leave MultiChoice’s offerings completely.

The departure of BritBox follows an announcement earlier this year from Amazon Prime Video, that it would no longer be producing local content in Africa, including South Africa. It said it would instead be focusing on European-centric content.