The ‘Old’ ShowMax Was Better Than The ‘New’ ShowMax For This One Simple Reason.

I’m just seeing online that ShowMax relaunched (again?) in Kenya with a few more subscription packages starting as low as Kes. 300 per month for just entertainment content on mobile. At the same time, it just occurred to me that even though I have been on the ‘new’ ShowMax for some time I have been paying via credit card and NOT M-Pesa.

I recall after re-signing up for the ‘new’ ShowMax that the M-Pesa option was not available at the time which struck me as laughable given that when it comes to digital payments in Kenya, M-Pesa is by far the most popular option. Someone at ShowMax did NOT understand the assignment from this perspective as Kenya lives, eats, breathes, and works on M-Pesa. Period!

Anyway, let’s come back to the whole point of this post which is the revised subscription packages on the ‘new’ ShowMax. It would appear that these have been further expanded since the last ShowMax relaunch with a broader range of subscription tiers from top to bottom.

Now, it’s all nice and dandy that pricing starts as low as Kes. 300 for just entertainment content on mobile but what many of us really want is the Premier League and other sports too! This is (still) at Kes. 500, just for mobile. However, once again, in this latest incarnation of ShowMax, you can only consume Premier League games on mobile across all the different subscription tiers being offered.

Now, using the ‘old’ ShowMax, we could watch Premier League games on mobile, desktop, and connected / smart TV or by using a set-top box (STB) connected to a TV. It worked just fine and the price was right. All was well in the world for many of us and we happily paid for ShowMax.

However, the ‘new’ ShowMax killed this flexibility completely and the transition has been painful as watching the Premier League on smartphones exclusively is never anyone’s cup of tea, seriously! Yes, you can also use a tablet(s) but it’s like a halfway solution to what we all really want.

One thing is clear — Multichoice is making these odd decisions on ShowMax where Premier Football and any other sports are concerned to protect its much pricier DSTV propositions from being cannibalized by ShowMax. However, in doing so, they have severely watered down ShowMax from a live sports perspective to the point it does not make sense.

Live sports is easily the holy grail of DSTV so If Multichoice chooses to make ShowMax just as good from this perspective, with competitive pricing, many users would simply drop DSTV in favour of ShowMax. It’s a pickle for sure and rather than upgrading to DSTV from ShowMax, for the sake of live sports, many previous customers have simply signed up for illegal and very affordable ‘IPTV’ streaming offerings at scale!

To reiterate, many of us were ‘happy’ to pay for the ‘old’ ShowMax with Premier League football and a couple of other football leagues and sports. This is my bone of contention and if I had my way I’d tell Multichoice to stop messing about and bring back the ‘old’ ShowMax.