MTN South Africa has announced a raft of aggressively priced data plans aimed at supporting MultiChoice Group’s newly relaunched Showmax platform for consumers who are reliant on mobile data.

MTN’s new Showmax Premier League LivePass will allow Showmax subscribers to stream all English Premier League games for R79/month.

The new Showmax-specific data plans, which will be available from 12 February, provide a number of options:

• Showmax Premier League LivePass, which offers live-streaming access to all 380 Premier League matches on mobile devices. For R79/month, the offer includes “sufficient streaming data to watch all live matches”, though neither MTN nor MultiChoice specified how much data is actually included. “Subscribers will also have access to additional Premier League content such as talk shows, documentaries and match highlights.” LivePass is subject to a fair-use policy, which is managed weekly.
• Weekly Entertainment Mobile bundle, costing R19/week. Subscribers will have access to the Showmax Entertainment Mobile plan, which features Showmax Originals, international and local series, movies, and children’s shows. The Weekly Entertainment Mobile plan includes 1GB of MTN streaming data, allowing customers to watch “up to 40 hours of content each week” when using Showmax’s data-saving setting that caps data usage at 40MB/hour. “This offers one of the most flexible and budget-friendly options for consumers,” the companies said in a statement.
• Showmax Monthly Entertainment Mobile bundle, costing R59/month including 5GB of streaming data, which they said is “enough to watch 125 hours on Showmax’s lowest data setting”.

“MTN … views the partnership with Showmax as integral to ongoing efforts to open the streaming experience to a much wider audience…,” the operator said.

MultiChoice relaunched Showmax on 15 January, cutting the price of its entertainment offering from R99 to R89/month as it ratchets up its fight against international streamers like Netflix.

The platform on which the new Showmax is running was built in partnership with developers at NBCUniversal, which owns the US-focused Peacock streaming platform. NBCUniversal parent Comcast, which also owns Sky in the UK, has acquired a 30% stake in Showmax.

Apart from the lean-back experience at R89/month, the new Showmax has several very aggressively priced mobile-only tiers:

• R39/month for general entertainment on mobile;
• Premier League football for R69/month on mobile (will offer all 380 games); and
• A bundle of the above for R99/month.

“MultiChoice realises it has to disrupt itself,” MultiChoice South Africa and Showmax CEO Marc Jury told TechCentral in a recent interview.

Read: MultiChoice open to selling more of Showmax to Comcast

There are no plans to increase pricing until at least 2025, he added. Other sports, provided by MultiChoice-owned SuperSport, could be added later. “We will make those decisions as we go. We do plan to add additional sport over time.”  – © 2024 NewsCentral Media

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