First Nigerian MD of Multichoice Nigeria, John Ugbe is a man keen on leaving a mark on the sands of time. In this interview, he shares with Gboyega Alaka the numerous efforts his organisation is undertaking to impact its host community, while taking time to provide answers to some knotty questions its (DSTV) customers have been itching for.
One of the major issues customers seem to have with the DSTV services is interruptions, whereas some of your rivals don’t seem to have much of this, isn’t there something you could emulate from each other to ensure this becomes a thing of the past?
I think we must be careful while comparing services. You can’t compare dish services to terrestrial services. It’s a different technology. Take look at GoTv, which is a Multichoice product and which is a digital terrestrial service, they don’t have the same weather interruption issues. So each platform has its own nuances and advantages. Satellite technology I’m sure is the technology that has the best availability in the world. Think about it, how many times have you heard that a satellite fell off? It’s so reliable. Also, it allows you to get reception even in the remotest part of the country and by extension, Africa. We’re pushing a lot of service quality and I think that service reliability is one of the biggest qualities we’re pushing. We even go as far as providing double equipment in certain cases, just so you never have outages. When was the last time you heard that the entire DSTV service was down? I think that if you can’t really recall any such time, then the reliability of our service is something that is integral to the way we work. And it’s not something that is easy. It means we have multiple back-ups; we have multiple sites, which we maintain and keep idle in case something went wrong.
Another major complain is the butting period, which sometimes seems to take forever or long enough to make one miss a great goal in a football game…
We unfortunately cannot control when a team scores. Some people tell me, ten years ago, your decoder butted faster than now; but maybe the decoder didn’t have the facilities and programmes that we have now. Don’t forget that the more functions and channels you have, the longer it takes for the decoder to pick them all. Think about it, now you can record, you can rewind and you can even watch two different channels. As we add these different functionalities, your decoder needs longer time to butt and get all these functions alive again. Also, we try to encourage people to try and use a UPS because that keeps you watching within that time that you go and change your source of power. So what I can say is that we will keep improving.
There is also this issue about your billing system, which even the senate in Nigeria has taken you up on, why is it taking eternity to adjust to the ‘pay as you watch,’ which according to the senate, already exists in South Africa?
I’ve always been shocked when people say the ‘pay as you watch’ system is operated in South Africa, because I’ve always asked ‘where?’ I know the Multichoice group of companies, so I know it’s not practised anywhere. But I must take you into a better understanding of Pay TV and digital satellite TV and now for content; I’ve asked people ‘When you acquire the rights to a football match, how do you go back to the right owners to say that ‘you know half way into the game, Arsenal supporters were not happy that their teams were maybe three goals down and all decided to switch off their decoders while hoping that they comeback before the end of the game.’ How do you explain to them that your customers are not going to pay you for the rest of the game? Again I ask people, when you go to watch a football game and you have to leave at half time, do you get a refund? There are some content like the big boxing match, Manny Pacquiao vs Floyed Mayweather, where you even have to ‘pay per view’ in addition to your normal subscription in some countries. Now remember, ‘pay as you watch’ and ‘pay per view’ are completely different. That match was sold at ‘pay per view’ for one hundred dollars in the United States, additional subscribers’ normal subscriptions. Now we don’t even have a monthly subscription of a hundred dollar on any of our bouquet.
Your compact bouquet has benefitted from the provision of the full complement of the English Premier League and the Spanish La-Liga, as well as the Euro 2016; there has also been a hardware price slash. Were these results of the pressure from the Consumer Protection Council?
We’ve always looked at giving value, and giving value for us means periodically bringing in new products. So let me just correct, it wasn’t a price slash; it was adding much more content than the price. The premiership, the La-Liga, Euro 2016 are some of the most expensive contents that we have. Again, it wasn’t in response to any pressure because I don’t think we could have woken up the next morning to effect such changes.
But I think our discussion in this country is too much about foreign things; in our thinking Nigeria, I want us to highlight what we are doing with the Nigerian Professional Football League. This season for us is one of those defining seasons, where the league is maturing. We’ve seen attendances increasing, we have new teams promoted to the elite divisions and we’re seeing exciting games. And these games are coming to you live, so we want more discussions driving it. As we speak, one of the newly promoted teams, the MFM Football Club is at the top of the table, having won two of their three games. People should go out there to Agege Stadium and watch these teams and talk about them, buy their jerseys, because these monies will flow back to the team and by extension, the community; such that soon we may have other pay TV providers from around Africa and even outside Africa buying rights to show our games.
Aside the Nigerian Professional Football League, in what other areas have you invested in the country?
Just over a year ago, we took boxing as our pet projects. Before then, I don’t know anyone who had seen a Nigerian boxing match on TV or gone to the stadium to watch. I remember in the first edition, we had Jeremiah Okorodudu, one of our past Olympians and Joe Lasisi, two boxers who had a memorable bout in those days, sitting together. Anyone about my age would remember their rivalry. And on that day, it struck me that we are doing the right thing. Now one year later, the National Stadium Indoor Sports Hall is filling up again. We have boxers now wining 1million naira, 1.5million and we’re changing their lives. Now, it’s not just about the money, but the fact that they now have something to do. They’re practising and there is a destination for them; there is hope.
We started the same with the Nigerian Basketball League years back; we sponsored the league and put it on TV; and I think that league has continuously developed to a point where we even beat the number five team in the world to qualify for the Olympics. This time around, we got our full qualification from the African zone.
If you go to the movie industry; we have the AMVCA this weekend. It’s a very big event and we have so many people coming from across Africa at a huge cost.
Are there any other ways in which you’re trying to reach out to your customers or the larger Nigerian society by way of CSR?
In the last one month, we have opened a few Multichoice Resource Centres; these are in partnership with schools, where we develop audio-visual learning centres. We just opened some in Ogun State and a couple other states even as far as the North. What we’ve done is to partner with the state governments. We try to enrich learning in our schools through these facilities, such that the students get to see the things they’re learning about in rich colour. We’ve had over 60,000 students graduating from these Multichoice Resource Centres over the last few years; we recently spoke to some of them, some who have gone on to studying medicine about the impact these centres had on them and the feedback was encouraging.
What’s the future of digital Pay TV service in Nigeria?
Don’t forget, our service is now a benchmark for other services in Africa and the best in the world. Many people don’t know this, but after the US, Multichoice was the second in the world to introduce digital satellite television. And we’ve had some other firsts, even providing digital TV to your hand-held devices. It came out in Africa before anywhere in the world and Nigeria was the first place we launched it. You can now see movies just sitting in your home; one of the things we do and that guide us is that we keep families together. We even provide opportunities for a second screen so that, where there’s conflict over what to watch, there’s probably more than one screen. So going forward, what we see is a lot of innovations. From your DSTV App on your phone, you can pick up series football and different things, so we’re allowing you to take the TV everywhere you go now.
Let’s talk about you and what values and innovations you have been able to bring on.
First of all I’m Nigerian. A lot of people don’t know that, probably because I come from one of the minority tribes. I’m very Nigerian from Cross River State; I have a very small family; my wonderful wife and our two boys. Her job is very tasking because I’m always travelling and that means she has to be on ground and very strong. Most of the time, she has to play the roles of mother and father to the children and to me too. I think for me at Multichoice, it’s been how do we make the service easier? How do we expand the reach? We’ve introduced GoTV, with subscribers being able to buy a box for as low as two thousand naira; we’ve pulled DSTV subscription all the way down to one thousand naira; and we’ve added a lot of wonderful channels; local, international. I tell people that we show more EPL games in Nigeria than you can watch in the UK. We try to ensure that Nigeria stays ahead where I believe she is meant to be. We’re a team of young people; we develop our staff a lot. For instance our Super Sport crew that covers the EPL games is one hundred per cent Nigerian. When we started, it used to be two Nigerians on the team, but through proper hands-on training and development, we have been able to get this far. What we are building at Multichoice Nigeria is a Nigerian company that invests locally and is developing Nigeria. In the next five or ten years, wherever I may be, I want to be proud to look back and see some of the biggest boxing matches being put together in Nigeria, I want to see Nigerian footballers not going to some obscure countries to play but plying their trade in a very vibrant local football league, where they are paid and are very proud to wear the shooting stars jersey. We’re not saying they shouldn’t go to premier league or Spanish La Liga, but let’s hear of 50million pounds signings of Nigerians.
