MultiChoice rejigs leadership, sets up new tech division

The head of MultiChoice’s SA business, Nyiko Shiburi, is to head up the group’s new technology division as part of a leadership shake-up that sees SuperSport boss Marc Jury taking up the CEO position in the home market.

The DStv operator announced a raft of leadership changes on Friday, consolidating a number of units under a new group chief technology officer (CTO), the role to be assumed by Shiburi.

The new division will house the group’s broadcast technology division, enterprise business systems, group digital, DStv streaming technology and project management office under one division.

This is meant to help “align” delivery across the group.

“We are repositioning our technology area to lead our next growth phase and to deliver on our vision of becoming the technology platform of choice for African households. We have consolidated everything related to technology, engineering and technical divisions into a technology hub,” said MultiChoice group CEO Calvo Mawela in a statement.

Shiburi has been leading MultiChoice SA since late 2020. Before that, he was regional director for Multichoice Southern Region.

Jury, who now takes over from Shiburi, has been leading SuperSport since 2020. He has been responsible for managing sports-related programming across the SuperSport channels and marketing the content of these channels.

These changes are with effect from April 1.

The job of running SuperSport has been given to Rendani Ramovha, who has been appointed as CEO-designate, due to take over from April 2024. He is presently head of marketing and commercial at SuperSport.

Until Ramovha takes over next year, Teix Texeira — Supersport’s chief content officer — will be interim CEO for 12 months. During that period, Ramovha will report to Texeira.

Texeira recently rejoined SuperSport from Sky in New Zealand, where he occupied various leadership roles, including CEO of Sky Sports.

These leadership changes are taking place as the group, now worth R54.6bn, continues to push its investment in streaming, recently entering an agreement with media giants NBCUniversal, from the US, and the Sky, from the UK, to create a new Showmax service.

Outside SA, the outlook is brighter for the rest of Africa business, which is expected to return to trading profitability, driven in part by increased subscribers during the festive season in countries such as Nigeria.

Unfortunately, the positive momentum has been clouded by load-shedding and a weak economy, which greatly reduced activity in its SA business for the year to end-March 2023. As such, earnings will probably come in below guidance for the full-year.

On Friday, the share price — which is up 5.22% so far in 2023 — closed 1.51% firmer at R123.36.

WE HAVE CONSOLIDATED EVERYTHING RELATED TO TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND TECHNICAL DIVISIONS INTO A TECHNOLOGY HUB