By Steven Hawley
The MultiChoice Group is Africa’s largest media company and leading entertainment platform, serving more than 70 million subscribers and 23 million pay TV households in fifty markets across sub-Saharan Africa. Over the years, MultiChoice has kept pace with advances in media technologies, many of which they launched very early in their technology life-cycles. These include digital television services (GOtv), time-shifted TV (DStv Catch Up), DVR (DStv Explora), and VOD (BoxOffice).
In the 1990s, MultiChoice launched its own sports programming channel, SuperSport, and to protect its programming, engaged Irdeto as its supplier of video encryption technologies. MultiChoice purchased Irdeto in 1997 and has pursued an aggressive campaign against illegal streaming sites by applying its anti-piracy technologies.
Types of piracy
“Everyone is dealing with the same piracy challenges across the globe,” said Frikkie Jonker, who joined the MultiChoice Group in the 1990s and now is the director of broadcast cybersecurity and anti-piracy at Irdeto. In piracy’s early days, pirates copied VHS tapes and DVDs. Later, they became adept at stealing programming by intercepting the signal between the decoder in the set-top box and the TV set, where video is in the clear.
In the world of streaming, Mr. Jonker segments online piracy into three broad categories. “For one, pirates sell apps and decoding devices (illicit streaming devices), then offer the programming via the Internet for a fee of, say, $25 per month for twenty thousand channels. Consumers buy login credentials and access the services via the cloud. Piracy is cheap, affordable to set up, and pirates can offer a high-quality service.”
“Then there’s domain piracy, where criminal actors sell legitimate articles but also receive revenue from click-throughs; to attract eyeballs to take illegal channels. Third are massive pirate domains. We use tools that identify the biggest domains and evaluate unique visits by detecting IP addresses and therefore, their locations. This helps us to set priorities,” he said.
Increased roles for security
In addition to its interactive services over pay TV, MultiChoice was early to introduce a mobile video app (DStv Now), home Internet access services, and two online video services (Showmax and DStv Stream); which are delivered to non-TV media platforms including game consoles, tablets, smartphones and personal computers. In turn, Irdeto was tasked to protect the content and transactions flowing through all of these platforms, which it does through an array of digital security technologies made available through internal development and by acquisition. This included Irdeto’s acquisitions of Cloakware software anti-tampering technology and Denuvo to protect online game play.
But, while watermarking and fingerprinting technologies enable Irdeto to detect piracy, technology alone isn’t sufficient. “Because pirates and their technical experts are always working to circumvent the protections, anyone who stands still stands to lose the anti-piracy game,” said Mr. Jonker.
Anti-piracy is not just about technology
Telling national authorities that their laws are not effective against piracy is not a key to successful collaboration. “Instead, we write recommendations for national governments and for law enforcement agencies,” he said.
To that end, Irdeto has written a “bible” for national authorities that describes their understanding of national laws and makes recommendations about what they can do to enforce them against piracy. “For example, working with the Nigerian Copyright Commission or the Kenya Copyright Board. Each country has its own agency,” said Mr. Jonker.
Education is also a big focus. Irdeto does a lot of training with police agencies, individual officers and judges, on topics such as ‘What is intellectual property?” and “What is broadcasting piracy?”
Partnering against piracy
Because video services involve infrastructure and software from many suppliers, working together in a single heterogeneous service environment, Irdeto works with its competitors on behalf of video providers. The company has also established relationships with the Motion Picture Association, IFPI, the Business Software Alliance and other industry associations.
To complement this, Irdeto and MultiChoice also broadly collaborate with local, regional, national and international law enforcement authorities including agencies outside of Africa. “We also work closely alongside governmental agencies to advise them in regulatory matters pertaining to piracy across the African continent,” said Mr. Jonker.
Also, because people in government change when there is an election, Irdeto signs Letters of Agreement with governments which grant power of attorney. To place a framework around these partnerships, Irdeto was instrumental in creating Partners Against Piracy, with governments and enforcement agencies as members.
It’s not just what to know, it’s who to know
In addition to technologies and formal relationships across industry and with governments and regulators, the informal network is also important. “We work hard to maintain informal informer networks. “It’s not about the companies or the agencies. It’s about the people; the informal network of people from the secret services, from special forces, cybercrime experts, and “open source” resources,” said Mr. Jonker. “It’s staff. It’s relatives. It’s people that we served with in the military. It’s people who are criminals who want to close down their competitors,” he said. And to back up that informal network, there must also be effective enforcement and a sound legal basis for any enforcement work.
Signs of success
Despite difficult macroeconomic conditions and the ongoing threat of piracy, MultiChoice has maintained good results, growing its services significantly in the first half of its fiscal 2025, which were announced in November 2024. While its pay TV subscriber base was down by 5% during the first half, its Showmax online on-demand service customer base grew by 50% across Africa, year-over-year; while revenue for DStv Stream rose by 71%. During the 1H’25 period, MultiChoice Group produced 2,763 hours of local programming, bringing that library to more than 86,000 hours. Its SuperSport service covered the 2024 Paris Olympics and ICC T20 World Cup; broadcasting 10,240 live events and 21,540 hours of live coverage.
All the more reason to take service protection seriously. It’s a complex task and it’s important to keep the stake-holders motivated by investing in their success. And all of its efforts have begun to pay off. “Pirates have begun to see a collective force that will act against them,” said Mr. Jonker,
Why it matters
“If you invest in your anti-piracy team, give them the right skills, the right tools, and the right attitude,” said Frikkie Jonker, “And if you give them strong sales, marketing, and legal support; they can look the pirates in the eye and say that if they use MultiChoice content illegally, there will be consequences.”
Editorial note: Although the Irdeto business unit of the MultiChoice Group is a financial supporter of Piracy Monitor, neither company had any editorial influence in this article.
