DStv's decline didn't start recently. It started in 2021. And it hasn't stopped since.
Share of Search data, one of the more reliable leading indicators of where consumer attention is actually moving, shows this clearly when you map South Africa's streaming category over the past decade.
What share of search actually tells us
Share of Search measures the proportion of branded search volume a company captures within its competitive category. The underlying logic is simple: people tend to search in proportion to how they buy, or intend to buy. When a brand's search share rises, increased consideration and eventually market share tend to follow. When it falls, the reverse is true.
It's not a perfect metric. No single metric is. But as a leading indicator of where consumer attention is moving, it has a strong track record.
The data
The data drawn from Google Trends and Fofum Insights, tracks Share of Search for six streaming brands in South Africa from 2015 to 2025: YouTube, DStv, Netflix, Showmax, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime.
YouTube opened the decade commanding roughly 85% of category search, an almost absurd level of dominance. That share eroded steadily as Netflix grew and DStv held relatively firm, reaching a low of around 50% in 2021. Then YouTube reversed course completely, climbing back to approximately 66% by 2025. It didn't just recover, it accelerated.
Netflix grew sharply from near zero in 2015 to a peak of around 18% in 2020, then plateaued and began a slow decline. It currently sits at roughly 14%. Rapid rise, plateau, slow fade, the classic arc of a challenger that disrupted an incumbent, then became one.
DStv peaked at around 27% in 2021 and has declined steadily to approximately 14%. Five consecutive years of falling consumer attention in a category it once owned.
Showmax has grown modestly, from 0.6% in 2015 to around 4 to 5% today. Disney Plus and Amazon Prime remain marginal.
The 2021 inflection point
The data marks 2021 as the inflection point, and the data is unambiguous. DStv peaked and began declining. Netflix peaked and plateaued. YouTube reversed a seven year decline and started gaining again, hard.
Leo Marchandon in Gdansk and Paul Sandle 12 Mar 2026 What changed? The Covid-19 period pushed South Africans toward paid streaming at scale. When it ended, many concluded that YouTube's free, creator driven model was simply good enough. The shift from scheduled, curated content toward on demand and algorithmic content didn't just accelerate, it compounded. And YouTube captured nearly all of it.
What this means for DStv
MultiChoice has made a number of moves, but the search data suggests consumers haven't followed. The Showmax rebrand, now being wound down by Canal+, is the clearest illustration. Rebrands don't fix products, prices, or value propositions. They just make the problem more expensive.
DStv's challenge is structural, and the search data has been signalling it for five years.
The broader point
Share of Search won't tell you everything. It doesn't capture pricing dynamics, content quality, or the lived experience of a subscriber. But it does capture something harder to fake: unprompted consumer interest, measured at scale, over time.
Right now, that interest is moving toward YouTube and away from the platforms that defined South African streaming just five years ago.
The brands that read that signal early have time to respond. The ones that don't are already behind. And no rebrand will change that.
What to do with this
If you're only tracking performance through lagging indicators, subscribers, revenue, market share reports, you're seeing the market as it was, not as it is. By the time those numbers move, the audience already has.
Share of Search won't replace your dashboard. But it should be on it. It costs nothing to monitor, it updates continuously, and it has a habit of being right before the quarterly results confirm what it already told you.
The streaming data presented here covers an entire category. But the principle applies anywhere consumers have a choice and a search bar, which in 2025 is everywhere. Run the same analysis on your category. If your Share of Search is falling while your revenue holds steady, you're not winning. You're coasting on momentum that's already started to fade.
The shift, in most cases, has already happened. The question is whether you're looking at data that can actually tell you that.
Data source: Google Trends and Fofum Insights, 2015–2025.
