There comes a point with every monthly subscription when you look at the debit order and ask yourself a rather uncomfortable question.
Am I actually using enough of this to justify what I’m paying? For many DStv Premium subscribers, that question probably arrives once a month with remarkable consistency. You tell yourself you need Premium because of that one channel, that particular sport or the movies and series you absolutely cannot live without. Then another month passes and you realise you’ve spent most evenings watching the same three channels anyway.
Well, from 17 September, DStv is making that conversation considerably more interesting. The company is introducing a new line-up of packages, and one number immediately caught my attention: R500 a month. That’s the price of the new Movies & Series package, and if you’ve primarily been keeping Premium for entertainment rather than sport, you may finally have a very good reason to downgrade. According to DStv’s official guide to its new packages, Movies & Series includes M-Net, kykNET, BBC Earth, Discovery Channel and M-Net Movies+, among others.
Which raises the obvious question. How much of Premium are you actually watching? Because if the answer is mostly movies, series and M-Net, paying for everything else starts looking a little like ordering the entire buffet because you really like the roast potatoes. Of course, there is one enormous complication.
Sport changes everything
This is where your household’s relationship with the remote becomes extremely important. DStv’s new Sports package includes every Premier League, Champions League and PSL match, along with SuperSport Cricket. Rugby fans get domestic competitions and a weekly URC match. But if your weekends revolve around the Springboks or you consider missing a Formula 1 race a genuine family emergency, you’re staying on Premium. The full premium rugby offering, Springbok matches and Formula 1 remain there. So essentially, DStv has created an interesting divide. Football and cricket fans may finally have room to move down. Bok and F1 fans? Please return to your seats.
And this is where the new packages become genuinely useful, because instead of everybody paying for a large bundle containing things they don’t necessarily watch, subscribers can start looking more closely at what actually keeps them subscribed.
The savings aren’t insignificant
According to MyBroadband’s breakdown of the new pricing, the differences between the packages become considerably clearer when you put the numbers next to each other.
| Package | Streaming | Decoder |
| Sports | R399/month | R479/month |
| Movies & Series | R500/month | R500/month |
| Premium | R799/month | R979/month |
Now things get interesting.
If you’re currently streaming Premium at R799 and move to Sports at R399, you’re saving R400 a month, or R4,800 a year if prices remain unchanged. Move to Movies & Series instead and the saving is R299 a month, or R3,588 a year.
For decoder customers, the difference becomes even more noticeable. Moving from Premium at R979 to Sports at R479 saves R500 a month, or R6,000 a year. Moving from Premium to Movies & Series at R500 saves R479 a month, which works out to R5,748 a year.
| Moving from Premium to… | Streaming Saving | Annual Saving | Decoder Saving | Annual Saving |
| Sports | R400/month | R4,800 | R500/month | R6,000 |
| Movies & Series | R299/month | R3,588 | R479/month | R5,748 |
Suddenly we’re no longer talking about saving enough for a takeaway. But there’s an obvious catch. Saving R5,000 means absolutely nothing if you spend the next twelve months staring mournfully at sporting events you can no longer watch.
DStv isn’t automatically downgrading everyone
Some existing customers will automatically migrate into the new structure. Compact becomes Sports, Family becomes Select and Access becomes Starter. DStv says those customers won’t pay more because of the migration. Premium customers, however, remain on Premium. So if you’ve spotted Movies & Series and suddenly realised you’ve been funding a considerable amount of sport you haven’t watched since 2019, you’ll need to make the downgrade yourself.
DStv’s downgrade information says customers can schedule a downgrade for their next payment date and can downgrade once a month. Upgrades can take place during the month, with subscribers paying the difference for the remaining period. There’s also some uncertainty around existing Compact Plus subscribers, with different information reported about exactly how those customers will migrate. If that’s your package, I’d confirm what applies specifically to your account before doing any enthusiastic budgeting.
Maybe the real question is much simpler
Forget the enormous channel lists for a moment. Look at what you actually watched during the past month. Not what you might watch. Not that documentary channel you’ve been promising yourself you’ll start watching because it makes you feel intellectually responsible. What did you actually watch?
Then ask everyone else in the house the same question, because making this decision without consulting the person who watches Formula 1 is an excellent way to discover previously unknown tensions in your relationship. If most of your viewing consists of M-Net, movies and series, the R500 Movies & Series package deserves a serious look. If football and cricket dominate your television, Sports at R399 becomes interesting.
And if the Springboks and Formula 1 are non-negotiable, Premium still has you exactly where it wants you. That’s what I find most interesting about DStv’s overhaul. It doesn’t necessarily make Premium irrelevant. Instead, it finally gives some subscribers a more realistic opportunity to ask whether they actually need it. Because ultimately, the best package isn’t the one with the longest channel list.
It’s the cheapest one that still has everything you actually watch.
