Azam TV has made strides in Tanzania, challenging major Pay-TV industry players such as DStv, a company with a pan-African presence.
Azam TV saw a surge in subscribers by 26% last year, marking it the fastest-growing Pay-TV among 62 million Tanzanians.
Azam gained an additional 234,612 subscribers, raising the total count of active decoders to 1,135,479, as per the latest data from the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA).
Who Owns Azam TV?
Azam TV is a subsidiary of the Bakhresa Group of Companies, a Tanzanian family-owned conglomerate. It is owned by an entrepreneur and Tanzanian billionaire Said Salim Bakhresa, and the business is one of the largest in the region.
Azam operates mostly in Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya.
Under the review period, China’s Star Media, the parent company of Star Times, reported a subscriber growth of 3.2% in Tanzania.
Star Times is the leading player in the TV market and saw its subscriptions grow by 67,532 to an active subscriber base of 2,158,795.
On the other hand, Multichoice, a South African company that runs DStv, witnessed a decrease in its subscriber base in Tanzania, dropping to 245,349 in 2023 from 256,329 the previous year.
Besides the operators above, the Tanzanian market has four other smaller players.
These include Continental with 68,804 subscribers, ZUKU with 32,156, BTL with 17,392, and Agape with 4,001.
According to TCRA, the total number of pay-TV subscribers rose to 3,661,976 in 2023, up from 3,369,521 in 2022.
With a young, rapidly growing, and urbanizing population of 62 million, Tanzania presents a promising landscape for the expansion of pay-TV operators.
