GOtv is a

pay television Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to Subscription business model, subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichan ...

terrestrial service in

sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...

owned by broadcaster

MultiChoice MultiChoice is a South Africa, South African company that operates DStv, a major satellite television service in Sub-Saharan Africa. The company also operates GOtv Africa, GOtv, a minor satellite TV service operating in 9 countries, and Showmax, ...

and launched on 5 September 2011. It mainly consists of African and international programming.

History

The terrestrial TV service was founded in October 2011 by MultiChoice. It features news channels such as the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN; , ) is a private-media conglomerate headquartered in Wadi Al Sail, Doha, funded in part by the government of Qatar. The network's flagship channels include Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, which pro ...

and

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

, sports channels such as SuperSport and

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

, local & international content from

Africa Magic Africa Magic is a collection of Pay TV entertainment channels that focus on African programming, most popularly Nigerian series and movies. ''Africa Magic'', which started off as single channel of the same name, is a brand owned by M-Net and no ...

and

M-Net Movies M-Net Movies is a group of South Africa, South Africa-based film-only television channels launched as Movie Magic in 1995 and broadcast across Sub-Saharan Africa on pay TV satellite television, satellite services DStv and GOtv. The channels broad ...

among others, including

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscri ...

channels. It is currently available in countries such as

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

Malawi Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south, and southwest. Malawi spans over and ...

Zambia Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa. It is typically referred to being in South-Central Africa or Southern Africa. It is bor ...

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

and

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

. The current director general of the company is John Ugbe. In Kenya, one can use the GOtv Paybill Number 423655 to pay for their subscription via

M-Pesa M-PESA (M for mobile, ''PESA'' is Swahili language, Swahili for money) is a mobile banking, mobile phone-based money transfer service, payments and Micro-finance, micro-financing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone and Safaricom, the largest ...

Make sure your GOtv decoder is turned on before making payment.

Acquisition by Canal+ S.A.

Nearly a year later, on February 1, 2024, Canal+ made an offer to MultiChoice's investors to acquire remaining shares, subject to regulatory approval, offering a price of R105 per share, 40% higher than the price of R75 offered the previous day. MultiChoice rejected the offer believing it undervalued the company and following a reprimand by the Takeover Regulation Panel, Canal+ revised it's offer and upped it's bid to R125 per share, the share price was 67% higher than the MultiChoice share price. In June 2024, Canal+ Group and MultiChoice released a joint circular with the French broadcaster that has obtained 45,2% of company shares with an interim board approving on the revised offer. Both companies made a filing to local regulators in September 2024 with the terms of the agreement remaining unchanged. Under the deal, Canal+ will spin out MultiChoice SA's broadcasting licence which includes DStv as an independent entity to comply with the Electronic Communications Act, which prohibits foreign entities from owning more than 20%. New shareholders set to enter the transaction include Former Telkom's CEO Sipho Maseko's Afrifund Investment and businesswoman Sonja De Bruyn's Identity Partners that will form the entity known as LicenceCo to handle the operations in South Africa and give it 51% economic interest with the remaining 49% for Canal+.https://techcentral.co.za/canal-buyout-sipho-maseko-multichoice/258726/

References

External links

* {{official website, https://gotvafrica.com/
Official website for Nigeria
2011 establishments in Africa Direct broadcast satellite services Satellite television Television in Nigeria