The French entertainment giant Canal+ has hiked its stake in MultiChoice to 26.26%.
From around 6% in 2020, Canal+ built its stake to 15% by September last year. It reached 18.4% in mid-June, and 20.1% in by July this year.
Pushing its shareholding to beyond 35% will trigger a mandatory buyout offer to other shareholders.
Canal+ is owned by Vivendi, which is also the owner of one of the recording giant Universal Music Group, as well as the advertising giant Havas.
Canal+ previously called its stake in MultiChoice "a long-term financial investment", but the sharp increase in its shareholding has fuelled renewed speculation that it may have more ambitious plans in store.
Like MultiChoice, the Paris-headquartered Canal+ has a large footprint in Africa. The Canal+ Afrique pay-television offering is big in French-speaking countries in Central and West Africa, with more than five million subscribers on the continent. For its part, DStv owner MultiChoice has 21.8 million active African users (of which 9 million are in South Africa).
Canal+ and MultiChoice have teamed up on co-productions in the past, most recently an action-drama series called Spinners in South Africa.
The 8-episode series, which will stream on MultiChoice's video streaming service Showmax goes inside the dangerous world of car spinning in Cape Town, Channel24 reported.
Analysts previously pointed out that these co-productions share content costs and save money; a closer relationship could mean even bigger cost savings.