What Netflix’s Afcon Play Teaches SA E-commerce

Netflix didn’t buy live Afcon rights. It launched a daily highlights show—8am SAST, every morning from 22 December to 19 January—hosted by Robert Marawa and Minnie Dlamini, with analysis from Melissa Reddy. That choice looks small on paper. Strategically, it’s loud.

Here’s the real story: Netflix is testing African sports demand the same way strong online retailers test product-market fit—with a lower-risk, high-signal format. And the method behind that test is exactly what South African e-commerce and digital services should copy: understand behaviour, personalise the “next best thing”, and build habits.

This matters right now because South African businesses are heading into a new year where paid media is pricier, attention is thinner, and customers expect services to feel local and relevant. I’ve found the winners aren’t the ones shouting louder—they’re the ones using AI-driven personalisation to show the right thing at the right time.

Netflix’s Afcon move isn’t about sport—it’s about habit

Netflix’s daily Afcon wrap is not a live broadcast replacement. It’s a “catch-up companion”: curated highlights, fan reactions, interviews, and atmosphere from Morocco (the host nation), packaged for people who don’t have time (or budget) for wall-to-wall coverage.

That’s the key insight for e-commerce: habits beat one-off spikes.

The format is the strategy

A daily show at a fixed time trains a simple behaviour: open Netflix in the morning, get your Afcon fix, carry on with your day. It’s routine design.

South African online retailers often focus on “big days” (Black Friday, festive promos, payday) and forget the compounding value of weekly—and even daily—engagement.

If Netflix can use a highlights show to build a repeat pattern, you can use AI to build repeat patterns around:

• “Back in stock” alerts that are actually relevant to the shopper’s browsing history
• Weekly personalised deals that match a customer’s brand and price preferences
• Post-purchase content that reduces returns (fit guides, usage tips, setup videos)
• Service reminders timed to real usage cycles (insurance, fintech, telco, subscriptions)

Snippet-worthy takeaway: Habit-building content is cheaper than buying attention over and over.

What Netflix is really testing: demand signals and audience segments

Netflix’s playbook globally has leaned on sports storytelling (documentaries, behind-the-scenes series) and selective live-adjacent events. The Afcon show fits: meaningful sports engagement without the complexity and cost of live rights.

For South African e-commerce and digital services, the parallel is straightforward:

Don’t start by building the most expensive thing. Start by learning what customers actually do.

The “low-risk, high-signal” launch model

A highlights show is a controlled experiment:

• Does football content drive daily opens?
• Which regions engage most?
• Do viewers binge episodes or sample occasionally?
• Do highlights outperform analysis?
• What languages/subtitles increase completion?

That’s basically product analytics. It’s also what AI systems thrive on: turning behaviour into predictions.

How to copy this with AI in South African businesses

If you run an online store or digital service, you can run Netflix-style experiments without huge budgets by implementing:

1. AI segmentation: cluster customers by behaviour (frequency, categories, basket size, discount sensitivity)
2. Propensity scoring: predict who’s likely to buy, churn, or respond to a certain offer
3. Next-best-action recommendations: what to show now (product, content, support prompt, payment option)
4. Creative variation testing: let AI help generate multiple versions of emails/ads and automatically learn winners

Practical example: a South African beauty e-commerce store can test a “daily highlights” equivalent—a 90-second daily routine tip personalised by skin type and past purchases. Measure open rate, click-through, repeat sessions, and repeat purchases.

Stance: Most local businesses over-invest in campaigns and under-invest in learning loops.

Local relevance beats generic personalisation

Netflix didn’t launch a generic football show. It used recognisable South African talent and a pan-African accessibility layer (English audio, English and French subtitles). That’s not a nice-to-have—it’s an acquisition strategy.

In South Africa, personalisation fails when it’s purely transactional (“Recommended for you”) but ignores cultural context: language, payment habits, delivery constraints, and local seasonality.

What “culturally relevant personalisation” looks like in SA e-commerce

Answer first: It’s personalisation that respects how South Africans shop, pay, and receive goods.

Examples that actually move the needle:

• Payment-aware recommendations: promote products aligned to the customer’s typical method (card, EFT, payflex-style pay-in-installments, wallet) and show price breakdowns clearly
• Delivery-realistic merchandising: if a customer is in an outlying area, prioritise items with dependable shipping lanes and transparent delivery ETAs
• Language and tone optimisation: use customer-preferred language and simpler wording for onboarding and support flows (especially for financial products)
• Calendar-aware promos: month-end vs mid-month behaviour, school terms, December travel, and January “reset” spending

If you’re running digital services (fintech, insurance, telco, online education), the same logic applies: context beats raw click history.

AI that’s worth implementing (and AI that isn’t)

If you want ROI in 2026, prioritise:

• Search and merchandising AI (people can’t buy what they can’t find)
• Personalised lifecycle messaging (welcome, abandon, post-purchase, replenishment)
• Customer support automation with guardrails (FAQ + order status + handoff)

Deprioritise (for now): flashy generative experiences that don’t reduce friction or increase conversion.

Snippet-worthy takeaway: The best AI personalisation in South Africa is logistics- and payment-aware.

Sports highlights are a content product—your store needs one too

Netflix is packaging sport as entertainment and analysis. That’s content-as-a-product, not “content marketing”. The implication: South African retailers should stop treating content as decoration and start treating it as a conversion tool.

Build your own “highlights show” using AI

Answer first: Create a repeatable, low-effort content format that’s personalised and measurable.

Here are formats that work well in e-commerce and digital services:

• Daily or weekly drops: “Top 5 deals in your size”, “This week’s essentials under R500”
• Category recaps: “What’s trending in home office”, “Most re-ordered baby items this month”
• Post-purchase mini-guides: “How to style it”, “How to set it up”, “How to maintain it”
• Service usage snapshots: “Your spend this month”, “Your data usage trend”, “Your renewal checklist”

AI makes this scalable by generating the first draft of copy, selecting products, and tailoring sends by segment.

The metrics that matter (copy Netflix’s scoreboard)

Don’t measure content by “views” alone. Track:

• Return frequency (sessions per user per week)
• Recommendation CTR (by segment)
• Conversion rate after content exposure (viewed content → purchase)
• Average order value change for personalised vs non-personalised
• Support deflection rate (for digital services)

If you don’t have these, personalisation becomes vibes.

People also ask: “Do I need AI to personalise like Netflix?”

Answer: You need a system, not magic.

Netflix benefits from massive data, but the core ingredients are available to South African businesses:

• Clean product and customer data (even if it’s small)
• A feedback loop (tests + measurement)
• A basic recommendation or segmentation layer
• Consistent content packaging

Start with what you already have: browsing history, past purchases, email engagement, on-site search terms, and support tickets.

A practical 30-day plan for SA teams

If you want to apply the Netflix Afcon lesson quickly, this is a realistic month-long sprint.

1. Week 1: Choose a habit format

   • Pick one recurring asset: weekly personalised deals, category recap, or post-purchase tips.

2. Week 2: Fix product and customer data basics

   • Ensure categories, sizes, prices, stock, and delivery promises are accurate.

3. Week 3: Launch segmentation + one personalised journey

   • Example: abandon browse emails with products filtered by budget and availability.

4. Week 4: Run one controlled experiment

   • A/B test: personalised recap vs generic newsletter.
   • Decide based on conversion, not opens.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s momentum and learning.

Where this fits in the “AI in South Africa” story

This Afcon launch is a neat reminder that AI in e-commerce and digital services isn’t only about chatbots. It’s about building local, repeatable engagement loops—using data and algorithms to turn attention into habit, and habit into revenue.

If Netflix is willing to start with highlights to understand African sports appetite, South African businesses should be willing to start with one or two focused AI journeys to understand customer appetite. The next step is simple: pick one customer moment where friction is high (search, checkout, delivery uncertainty, support) and personalise it.

What would happen to your 2026 growth if you stopped chasing spikes and started building a daily reason to return?