Two free video streaming services showing strong growth in South Africa

According to Similarweb, an online traffic analysis platform, eMedia and SABC have seen strong growth in their respective video streaming services in recent months.

eVOD and SABC+ are latecomers to the streaming space and must play catch-up in a market flooded with excellent local and international options.

South Africa’s first subscription video streaming service, Showmax, launched in 2015, which means it is nearly a decade old. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video entered the local market in 2016.

eVOD was only launched in August 2021, while SABC+ debuted in November 2022.

However, these services have one significant advantage over the other options — they are completely free.

Many South Africans cannot afford a monthly streaming subscription on top of what they must pay for mobile data.

TV series on free-to-air channels SABC 1 and E-tv continue to be South Africa’s most-watched, with several million peak viewers regularly tuning in for popular soaps and dramas.

However, linear TV programming has been on a general decline in South Africa in recent years.

Greater smartphone adoption and cheaper mobile data prices have catapulted Internet access in South Africa, accelerating so-called “cord-cutting” and a migration away from traditional broadcast TV consumption to Internet-based streaming.

According to Similarweb data, the two services have recently recorded significant traction.

eVOD.co.za had roughly 594,800 unique visitors in March 2025, up 54.79% from the previous month. Page views on the service also increased by 25.51% to 1.9 million.

While its latest ranking in South Africa was unavailable at the time time of publication, the service had already jumped an impressive 233 spots between January and February 2025 — going from 1,132nd to 899th most-visited.

In the category of streaming and online TV, eVOD’s ranking improved from 69th in December 2024 to 50th in February 2025.

eVOD is listed as a top priority in eMedia’s technological initiatives in its 2024 annual integrated report.

In its interim results for the 2025 financial year, the company also revealed it had invested over R240 million in local content that would launch first on eVOD.

“The viewed minutes per month and the unique users for eVOD show consistent growth on a month-on-month basis, ensuring that the business does not incur losses on an annual basis,” eMedia said.

eMedia previously told News24 that eVOD had racked up 1.13 million registrations and 1.3 billion watched minutes on eVOD by July 2024.

SABC+ in the top 500 — and climbing

While eMedia has dubbed its service to be the “Netflix of South Africa,” the SABC seems to be performing even better with its much newer video streaming service.

SABC+ ranked as the 388th most-visited website in South Africa during February 2025, up from 437th the month before and 463rd in December 2024.

It clocked 861,100 visits in South Africa in February 2025.

The broadcaster recently told MyBroadband that registered users had surged to more than 850,000 since it migrated to a new platform in July 2024.

The service is expected to play a key part in the SABC’s digitisation journey, which will be pivotal in its turnaround efforts.

With SABC+’s additional advertising revenue in the mix, the public broadcaster expects to turn a profit of R907 million in 2026/2027, followed by R784 million in 2027/2028.

SABC communications head Mmoni Ngubane said that the service will be implementing banner ads “soon,” increasing its monetisation potential.

SABC+ has already provided additional revenue through pre-roll ads introduced in July 2024.

Ngubane acknowledged that SABC+ was not yet profitable on its own and that the broadcaster’s corporate plan included different strategies to ensure all its platforms and channels were optimised for favourable performance in terms of the SABC’s public and commercial mandate.