Popular online video-on-demand service, iROKOtv will be expanding to East Africa over the course of the following week, according to founder, Jason Njoku who announced the development via a tweet
Expansion mode. IROKOtv East Africa. On route to Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. All in 7days
— JasonNjoku (@JasonNjoku) July 13, 2014
iROKOtv has been going through some major changes in the past few months. Back in April, Jason Njoku announced they were shutting down their London office so they could reposition iROKOtv for it’s perceived future in the African market.
Two days before the London office shut down, they had announced the discontinuation of their ad-supported free service and plans to gradually move every user over to the subscription-only service, iROKOtv Plus. This move was motivated by the fact that, according to Jason, less than 3% of iROKOtv’s global monthly audience was a paying audience that generated 26 times more revenue than all free-loading users combined.
Expanding to East Africa seems like the logical next step towards securing iROKOtv’s future. While Nigeria remains their primary market, it generates only around 3% of iROKOtv’s annual revenue. iROKOtv is currently active in 170 countries with an estimated 75,000 paying subscriber base. Expanding to East Africa has the potential to be more rewarding for iROKOtv, as the market is more mature when it comes to broadband infrastructure.
However, iROKOtv still has the likes of Africa Magic Go, Wura TV and Dobox to contend with, if they are ever going to get any shot at achieving their 1 million paying subscriber base by 2020.
More details of the East Africa expansion to come, as we get them.
