Dish, Sling TV in Subscriber Loss

EchoStar lost about 348,000 net pay TV subscribers in the first quarter, compared with a drop of 552,000 in the year-ago period, the company said on Wednesday.

The company disclosed in a regulatory filing early on Wednesday that it lost around 135,000 net Sling TV subscribers in the latest quarter, compared with a year-ago loss of 234,000. It ended March with 1.92 million Sling TV subs.

“The decrease in net Sling TV subscriber losses was primarily related to lower Sling TV subscriber disconnects in 2024 due to our emphasis on acquiring higher quality subscribers, partially offset by lower Sling TV subscriber activations,” the company said in a regulatory filing. “We continue to experience increased competition, including competition from other subscription video-on-demand and live-linear OTT service providers, many of which are providers of our content and offer football and other seasonal sports programming direct to subscribers on an a la carte basis.”

EchoStar also recorded a net decline of about 213,000 in its traditional Dish satellite TV subscribers, compared with a loss of 318,000 in the year-ago period, ending March with 6.26 million. “This decrease in net Dish TV subscriber losses primarily resulted from a lower Dish TV churn rate, partially offset by lower gross new Dish TV subscriber activations,” the firm said in its filing.

EchoStar’s total pay-TV subscriber base, as of the end of the first quarter, stood at 8.178 million.

First-quarter revenue fell 8 percent to $2.73 billion, while its operating income declined 1 percent to $670.1 million.

Telecom mogul Charlie Ergen‘s EchoStar is led by Hamid Akhavan as president and CEO, with Ergen serving as executive chairman. It was created as of the start of the year via an all-stock merger of satellite TV and streaming service provider Dish Network with broadband and communications provider EchoStar Corp.