Re:Racing 240 audience up 24% on Tellytrack numbers in first independent viewership

This is encouraging but seriously needs to be backed up by more exciting product offerings that can effectively turn increased viewership into participation and long term support for racing.

How do they get these figures and how are they proven?
Is it just a statement by some obscure company ?

Channel 240 is a relatively new channel on DSTV. People will be naturally curious to see what it is about. When a person does tune in, what is the average time spent on the channel like below 5 minutes, 10 minutes and more, 20 minutes and more etc and how many viewers are there during these period of times.

Did the pools go up 24% also? Just wondering...

are we to believe that more people actually watched a Midweek Maiden day at Kenilworth than The Empress Club Meeting or Champions Day --- 7 Graded races but the viewers rather watch paint dry at a Kenilworth Meeting - Nonsense

R 534357.02 p6 pool cape maiden
R 1336356.67 p6 pool Empress Club day yet more punters watch the Cape Meeting and don't actually punt on it! Really pull the other one

just for general info - I have been Racing for 4 decades and never once has there been a ratio of 48% women at any tote or race course(If you had 48% women at races men would stop gambling and start chasing skirts- look around a tote and see how many women are in attendance if you exclude the staff) - never - so it would seem we have a great audience of women over 40 who like to watch Cape Maiden Races on Wednesday afternoons

.....find this highly questionable..... heard that DSTV subscriptions are considerably down year on year since the covid pandemic so what other platforms are they getting these increased viewers.... as also fewer seem to want to stream or subscribe to streaming service since Tellytrack due to the increased delay.....

Bob I think we can easily assign the 24% increase to all the exhilarating inserts on the photographers, artists, track managers, jockeys, Ngong ground staff, and let's not forget the infinitely looped Interbet and DStv adverts that play. I am surprised the number is not 124%™ actually. I certainly trust this number, and based on what I see, I have no reason to question the authenticity here.

.....and dont forget the many more that tune in for the cool DJ beats....

just thinking about it all the women i've dated only ever found out about Teletrack when I had my DSTV tuned to that channel- (I'm sure most blocked it after we broke up)

.....702 Radio interview earlier today.....

Gugu Mhlungu speaks to independent television critic Thinus Ferreira on pay-TV consumer trends and on why DStv subscribers are becoming less and less valuable.

They are still television diamonds – people who like TV so much that they're willing to pay money for it.

But a big ongoing trend and seismic South African consumer content change is fast reshaping what, and how much, people who pay for television are willing to pay for – which, in the instance of MultiChoice, means that DStv subscribers are becoming less and less valuable.

Gugu Mhlungu speaks to independent television critic, Thinus Ferreira, to find out why and how it's happening.

They are still the most valuable in the TV industry because these are people who are willing to pay money to watch television. So they are still valuable but are becoming less valuable because people are switching to lower packages

It's the same as what McDonald's has 100 people who used to walk in the door and buy a meal and now more and more those 100 are walking in and just buying a drink or some chips.


The important thing to look at is abbreviation, an acronym that we call ARPU and it stand for average revenue per user. So if your average consumer walks in the shop and they buy less, you might still have the same number of customers but what they walk out of or what they spend in the basket is becoming cheaper and cheaper or they are buying less items.

More and more DStv customers are either cancelling premiums or they are downgrading or they cancel outright and that means that the money that you get from subscribers is decreasing.


It does not look as if the (streaming) competitors have done enough [to take consumers from DStv].

Thinus Ferreira, Independent television critic