By Tope Oshunkeye (Nigeria)
Executive Head, Marketing, MultiChoice Nigeria
Nigeria’s Media & Entertainment industry is one of the fastest-growing creative industries in the world. Though a significant part of the nation’s informal sector, it has the potential to become the greatest export with a possible revenue of $14.8bn by 2025, up from its current return of $7.7bn.
Meanwhile, this industry — from film to music and fashion — had always been replete with talent, creativity and possibilities; still, it groped in the dark for years, facing its fair share of challenges and fits and starts. Some of the problems, it appeared, were the lack of opportunity for young Nigerians to transform their skills into economic gain, restricted access to content and content-sharing channels due to inadequate media infrastructure. For example, music lovers could only get glimpses of their favourite artistes on select days at the onset through shows such as Kenny Ogungbe and Dayo Adeneye’s Primetime Show.
Then came the entry of MultiChoice Nigeria, which understood early the significance of leveraging entertainment to enrich lives and impact society. To bridge the gap between infrastructure and opportunities, the group gradually created campaigns to support and invest in communities while shrinking the world into a smaller whole for people to connect in one fell swoop.
Right from the beginning, MultiChoice Nigeria took a significant role in the growth of Nigerian music by highlighting Nigerian music content and onboarding it to a global audience through premium music channels accessible via the DStv and GOtv platforms. The impact of music channels like MTV Base, Channel O, Hip Tv, Soundcity, Trace Naija, etc., through programmes that uncover quality content such as ‘Best of Spanking New,’ ‘Music Buzz,’ ‘Afropop Chart,’ and ‘Afrobeat 10’ cannot be understated. This preoccupation with entertaining and enriching lives through music adds to the industry’s promise of an estimated revenue of $10.8 billion by 2023, accounting for 1.4% of the GDP.
Established in 1993, MultiChoice Nigeria had a 7-year lead time before the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) became a guide and used those years to build a sustainable business. Today, that business represents shared prosperity, having created the right mix of opportunities for its people to grow while helping to build an industry that ranks as the second-largest in the world and the most loved in Africa.
Accenture, in a report for MultiChoice between 2015 and 2019, estimated that about $428 million had gone into the local content production business, mostly in developing local creativity and building the production infrastructure to support it. To put this investment in more perspective, it directly translates to 117,459 hours of local content which is huge both on an African and global scale, and more now that over 30 years of the organisation’s operations have been brought into view.
Undoubtedly, many challenges continue to plague the Media and Entertainment sector, such as insecurity, piracy and Naira Devaluation, amongst others, and the only way for an organisation like MultiChoice Nigeria to stay sustainable is to provide a mutually beneficial relationship with direct and indirect consumers of their services. The local content war chest continues to build growth and expansion ecosystems. Nigerian Idol, Pepsi Turn-up Friday and Owambe Saturday are some MultiChoice music shows that cater to a variety of viewers while also creating extensive value chains that collaborate to create and curate these productions. These shows function not only as entertainment but spotlight and reward talent, unplugging average Nigerians one participant at a time from the unemployment pool, which currently stands at 33%.
To further remedy that number, game shows like Come Play Naija act as a balancing act of bringing families together, rewarding winners and providing means of livelihood for the teams, directly and indirectly, connected with their inception. Although for the biggest reality TV show in Africa, BBNaija, it goes beyond entertainment, media and music; its beneficiaries also include the housemates, businesses, artisans and everyday people. In fact, businesses affiliated with the show see their engagement soar with each new season. Small wonder lead sponsors for Season 6 – Shine Ya Eye – Abeg saw users of its app increase by 7000% following its sponsorship of the reality TV show in 2021.
Speaking at the prize presentation for the 7th instalment of the show on Tuesday, October 4, 2022, MultiChoice Nigeria CEO John Ugbe bore testament to BBNaija as a phenomenon that goes beyond the notion of entertainment.
According to him, “Big Brother Naija has become more than mere entertainment as we all know. It is vital to socio-economic value creation. This year, we employed over 1,200 people directly and indirectly, and I’m talking about fashion designers, carpenters, photographers, and interior decorators. We touched every bit of the economy. And to date, over 10,000 people across the industries have worked on this show.”
“The show also contributes significantly to the Nigerian economy. An example is the production cost of about ₦4.7 billion, which includes licensing, auditing, and marketing. BBNaija is that production that touches lives,” he said.
Elsewhere, MultiChoice Nigeria distributes talents to push the frontiers of entertainment and creativity in the country through its talent factory. A two-pronged innovation, the MultiChoice Talent Factory (MTF), first, searchlights and nurtures budding talent, and second, polishes the skills of existing industry talents. Over the past seven years, more than 293 storytellers from across the African continent have been trained through the MultiChoice Talent Factory (MTF). This incubation programme had been, and is still being made possible, of course, through strategic partnerships with forward-thinking and like-minded organisations — partnerships which MultiChoice Nigeria favours to properly position itself as a thought leader, improve intersectionality in the arts and the business or the arts while making a positive impact in its immediate community.
In effect, MTF has a direct impact on the Nigerian movie industry. Homegrown talent who understand the cultural and experiential landscape of the country are provided with the necessary skills to turn ideas and experiences into motion pictures, thereby helping MultiChoice Nigeria stay true to its mission of telling authentic African stories. We are “very intentional about telling stories Nigerians will love and identify with,” and there are “more authentic Nigerian productions in the pipeline.” Dr Busola Tejumola’s words seem to capture it all.
Meanwhile, MultiChoice ensures that sporting events and sports enthusiasts aren’t left out of the positive footprint. A credible example is their transmission of all 64 matches in expert pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa commentary of the upcoming World Cup event.
All these multidimensional offerings cascade the dynamics of culture, fashion, art, tech and the general thought process in Nigeria. It’s such that when next you’re seeking to draw inspiration from a breakout star, you can follow in Diiche’s Uzoamaka Onuoha steps, or when you’re looking for the next best style to wear to that grand event, you don’t have to fetch a catalogue but watch the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA) or stay glued to the BBNaija live eviction show to catch Ebuka Obi-Uchendu and his trailblazing outfits.
While all those sound interesting, the main power of MultiChoice Nigeria lies in the ability to put people and make a significant impact on individuals, businesses, non-profit organisations, companies and the Nigerian community at large. By nurturing entrepreneurs, watering talent, and creating opportunities through multifaceted services and a powerful network, lives truly become enriched.
MultiChoice continues to build more credibility for the entertainment and media industry in Africa through its intentional investment in local content, future talent, and award shows while ensuring the market for the content they produce grows. This process has required a strong supply chain. MultiChoice Nigeria has proven equal to the task, investing over $1 billion in their distributors and suppliers, down to their installer network in just the last five years.
Whether this ecosystem model works or not is a question that a socio-economic value report by Accenture answers perfectly. The contribution of an estimated US$2.1bn to the Nigerian economy in the period under review shows that they understand the role they play in achieving a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development.
Through their business operations, investments in technology, local infrastructure, Corporate Social Investment (CSI) initiatives and local partnerships, MultiChoice Nigeria continues to enrich lives each year through initiatives such as MultiChoice Resource Centres, MultiChoice Talent Factory, GOtv Boxing, Sickle Cell Foundation, among others. MultiChoice Nigeria has committed time, resources and manpower to support these initiatives, showing that it is more than just business for them.