Since the opening up of Pay TV platform in Nigeria by South African MultiChoice using DTtv several years ago, many other rivals that entered the free market either exited unceremoniously or are struggling to stand segment competition.
When HItv came on board, Nigerians who are looking for some levels of relief from service flexibility wanted to celebrate but the company’s poor knowledge of the terrain and bogus cost control facilitated its early collapse.
Some years after, several other Pay TVs entered the market only to run away after observing that the lion king has several demarketing strategy to amass market share.
Then came StarTimes which rode on the back of the government’s owned Nigerian television Authority (NTA).
After the initial euphoria spread across areas of coverage, expansion became a big issue, thus forcing the Chinese investors to a tight corner of only few states.
Amongst all of them that came to drag the market share with DStv, the lion king relied on its dominance of the European sporting world to give each one of them a deserving technical knockout.
In Nigeria, the quality of European sports channel any Pay TV is showing clearly determines how it is going to control the market share because Nigerians are mainly football lovers.
However, though TStv has assured prospective subscribers that it will march others with superlative sports channels, analysts are skeptical that the lion king may be plotting a strategy that may end up boxing to a tight corner; the first gainer of the tax free scheme of the federal government in the industry.
However, the critical subscription platform many Nigerians are looking for which is Pay-Per-View seems to be lacking in TStv as what obtains in the new company offering is a ‘draconian’ Pay As You Go which can only allow subscribers a limited option to pause their subscription when not in use for not more than seven days in a month, thus extending at most, 37 days monthly subscription.
This according to industry watchers may not go down well with what many Nigerians want and what is obtainable in other climes. Which is Pay-As-You-Go.
Business Hilights recalls that the federal government on Sunday night during the flag off of the TStv transmission in Abuja, announced the concession of three-year tax relief to the new platform.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, announced the tax holiday, saying the unveiling of TStv would totally redefine the pay per view platform and, by extension, the television industry, by making it possible for people in all segments of society to enjoy high quality entertainment.
While hailing the core investors in TStv, Dr. Bright Echefu for rolling out at a time when government granted a pioneer status to the creative industry, Mohammed averred that all investors in the creative industry are entitled to a three-year tax relief while the investors in the sector would be exempted from paying tax dividends.
According to the Minister, “What Echefu has done is to democratise the media and entertainment industry and make it possible for all to have access to the best entertainment in the world. Just like a Nigerian also made history by crashing the cost of telephony in Nigeria, I am glad that another Nigerian is now coming forward also to crash the price of Pay TV”.
He made it clear to the investor that market share in Nigeria is driven by compelling contents.
Business Hilights gathered that TStv’s initial subscription cost, including a decoder, a dish and a remote control, is N5,000.
Another added advantage coming with the subscription is that after buying the decoder, subscribers will get up to 20GB of data as bonus, while subsequent full monthly subscription through e-payment platform will come with 10GB of data.
