DStv has suffered a sharp collapse in its Kenyan subscriber base, with more than eight out of every ten active customers opting out within a year as rising subscription costs and a struggling economy pushed households to cheaper and often illegal streaming options.
Data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows the pay-TV provider had only 188,824 active users by June 30, 2025, a steep fall from 1.19 million in the same period last year.
The CA classifies an account as active if it has paid for at least one subscription in the past 90 days.
The plunge came after MultiChoice Kenya, which operates DStv locally, adjusted its prices twice within a year, first in November 2024 and later in August 2025. The increments ranged from Sh500 to Sh700 across its six bouquets, leaving many customers unable to keep up.
In November 2024, the DStv Premium package increased to Sh11,000 from Sh10,500, while Compact Plus rose to Sh6,800 from Sh6,500. Less than a year later, the firm revised the rates again, with Premium climbing to Sh11,700 and Compact Plus to Sh7,300.
Over the past three years, MultiChoice Kenya has reviewed its rates five times as it seeks to slow down shrinking revenues. The company’s contribution to MultiChoice’s overall subscription income dropped to 7 percent in the year to March 2025, from 8 percent the year before.
The timing of these price changes has worsened the impact, with many Kenyan households dealing with stagnant or declining incomes, leading them to cut back on non-essential expenses such as pay-television. This has fueled a turn to online streaming, much of it accessed through unlicensed sites.
To counter the loss of customers, MultiChoice Kenya has been rolling out promotional offers that upgrade inactive users to higher packages at no extra cost once they renew their subscriptions.
For instance, a customer paying Sh1,450 for the DStv Access package is automatically upgraded to the Family package, which normally costs Sh2,250.
Despite these incentives, DStv’s customer losses contributed to the broader collapse in Kenya’s pay-TV sector, where overall active subscribers fell by 76.9 percent to 1.47 million in the year to June.
Competitors have not been spared. Tanzanian-owned Azam TV saw its subscriber base shrink by 63.1 percent to 30,095, while Wananchi-owned Zuku recorded a smaller decline of 1.6 percent to 252,051.
Like DStv, the other providers—StarTimes, Azam and Zuku—are facing unrelenting pressure from illegal streaming platforms, which have become increasingly popular among cash-strapped consumers.
