Ask a South African household why they pay R979 a month and the answer is rarely "the movie channels". It is the Springboks in November, the Proteas over the summer, the URC on a Saturday afternoon. Sport is what keeps DStv Premium in the budget — which is exactly why the reported R399 sports package has caught so much attention.
The new package details below come from pages published briefly on MultiChoice's website in early September 2026 and then removed. MultiChoice has not confirmed the line-up. Current prices and broadcast rights, where stated, are separately confirmed.
Where rugby and cricket sit today
SuperSport's rights position in 2026 is unusually strong, and all of the following is confirmed rather than reported:
- United Rugby Championship — SuperSport and DStv extended exclusive Sub-Saharan Africa rights in June 2026 in a multi-year renewal.
- Rugby World Cup — SuperSport holds exclusive Sub-Saharan Africa rights to the 2027 men's and 2029 women's tournaments.
- Cricket South Africa — an extended broadcast deal with SuperSport runs to the end of the 2026/27 season, covering Proteas men's and women's internationals plus a share of domestic white-ball cricket.
- Premier League — Sub-Saharan Africa rights sit with SuperSport for the 2025/26 to 2027/28 seasons.
- PSL — renewed in 2026 across the Premiership, Championship and the domestic cups.
In other words, there is no realistic alternative broadcaster for South African rugby and cricket. Whatever MultiChoice decides about packaging is, for now, the whole market.
What the reported restructure would change
The reported DStv Sports package at R399 a month would include Premier League, UEFA competitions, T20 cricket and local rugby including one URC match per week. For a rugby household that currently pays R979 for satellite Premium, that is a R580 monthly difference.
But two caveats matter more than the headline number.
1. One URC match a week is not the URC
A URC weekend typically has several fixtures, and South African supporters usually want the South African franchises. "One match per week" is a curated selection, not the competition. If your Saturday involves watching the Bulls and then the Stormers, one match a week does not cover it.
2. The national teams may not be included
Reporting suggests Springbok Tests and Proteas internationals would stay in the R799 Premium tier. If that is right, the package makes club and franchise rugby and cricket cheaper, while leaving the fixtures with the largest audiences exactly where they are.
That would be a rational commercial decision — you keep your most valuable content in your most expensive package — but it means the honest answer to "does this make rugby and cricket affordable" is: partly, and probably not the part you care most about.
The affordability picture, laid out plainly
| What you want to watch | Cheapest reported route | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Premier League and UEFA | DStv Sports | R399 (reported) |
| PSL football only | DStv Select | R299 (reported) |
| One Premier League match a week | DStv Starter | R99 (reported) |
| Domestic rugby and T20 cricket | DStv Sports | R399 (reported) |
| Springboks and Proteas internationals | DStv Premium | R799 streaming / R979 satellite |
What genuinely lowers a sports viewer's cost today
While the package question is unresolved, there are things within your control that do reduce what sport costs you per month — and they are not glamorous.
- Stop paying for decoders you do not watch. Extra View adds a monthly access fee per additional decoder. If a second decoder is sitting in a spare room, that is a recurring cost with no viewer attached. Our Extra View guide covers how linking works and when it is worth it.
- Fix the dish rather than upgrading the package. Households routinely upgrade bouquets to solve a picture problem that was never a bouquet problem. Pixelation during rain, dropouts at kick-off and channels that fail on one satellite frequency are almost always alignment or LNB faults, and they get worse in exactly the weather when the big matches happen.
- Have the installation done properly once. A dish mounted on a flimsy bracket or a gutter will drift out of alignment and cost you a callout every season. Our satellite dish installation page explains what a correct mount looks like.
- Check your LNB before a big tournament. A degraded LNB is the most common single cause of "it worked last season". A Smart LNB also removes the need for extra cable runs when you add a second decoder.
The bigger picture for South African sport
There is a reasonable argument on the other side of this, and it deserves stating. Cheap access is good for viewers, but broadcast revenue is a large share of what funds South African rugby and cricket. If a sports package priced at R399 pulls households down from R979, total subscription revenue can fall even as subscriber numbers hold — and the money for rights renewals has to come from somewhere. Unbundling that reduces revenue eventually shows up as fewer matches produced, or rights sold elsewhere.
Equally, the current position — where a household must pay R979 to watch a Test match — pushes people towards illegal streams, which returns nothing to the sport at all. MultiChoice has said as much in its own anti-piracy commentary, and we cover the enforcement side of that in DStv's crackdown on illegal streaming.
A cheaper legal sports package is plausibly the better answer for everyone. Whether the one that launches on 17 September actually contains the Springboks will tell you how serious the attempt is.