👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Safaricom ports to South Africa

If you paid for DStv this month expecting to watch the new season of House of the Dragon, we have some bad news. 

Canal+, the MultiChoice owner that operates DStv, is playing a different game of thrones. The payTV operator said it renewed its channels agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery, which runs CNN, Discovery, and Cartoon Network. But the separate deal that brings HBO’s blockbuster shows to your TV screens has expired.

If this feels like déjà vu, it probably is. Remember December 31, 2025? MultiChoice was walking on a similar tightrope when its parent company Canal+ was renegotiating licencing deals for about 12 channels, including CNN and Cartoon Network, to remain on DStv. It got that deal over the line at the eleventh hour. HBO, however, was negotiating under a different contract, and that problem appears to have finally caught up with it.

Explain content leasing like I’m new here: TV channels and TV shows are often licenced separately. A broadcaster can secure the right to carry CNN or Cartoon Network without automatically securing the rights to HBO’s premium catalogue. Canal+ renewed one agreement, but the one covering prestige HBO programming, including House of the Dragon, The White Lotus, and The Last of Us, has lapsed.

Canal+ has stopped short of saying whether negotiations are still underway or whether HBO content is gone for good. Either way, DStv subscribers are discovering that renewing the pipes doesn’t necessarily mean renewing what flows through them.

Is it all part of the plan? Maybe. Canal+ wants DStv to evolve from a traditional pay-TV operator into an entertainment aggregator, as Group CEO Maxime Saada previously said. It…