Starz added 200,000 domestic streaming subscribers in the third calendar quarter of 2023 (Lionsgate’s fiscal Q2 2024), taking the total number of domestic streaming subscribers back over 12 million. While up on the previous quarter, the subscriber number was still down on the third calendar quarter of 2022.
The second calendar quarter of this year was not the best for Starz, after confirmation that as many as 500,000 subscribers were lost during the three-month period. While 200,000 were added back in the most recent quarter, taking the total up to 12.02 million, this still resulted in fewer domestic subscribers than the 12.25 million reported for the first three months of the year.
Looking further back, Starz also reported 12.25 million for the third calendar quarter of 2022, resulting in a year-over-year decrease of around 200,000.
When it comes to the linear version of Starz, the pattern has been far more consistent over the past year, with the number of subscribers continually declining. For the third calendar quarter of 2023, Lionsgate reported a total of 7.42 million linear subscribers and this is down on the 7.68 million reported during the previous quarter, and the 8.76 reported for the same quarter of last year.
Overall, the latest linear and streaming subscriber numbers confirm that Starz ended calendar Q3 2023 with a total of 19.44 million subscribers. With the linear losses outweighing the streaming gains, this resulted in an overall subscriber decline from calendar Q2 2023’s 19.50 million and calendar Q3 2022’s 21.01 million.
When factoring in all of Lionsgate’s services (Starz, Lionsgate+ and StarzPlay Arabia), the company ended the most recent quarter with a total of 28.04 million (18.83 streaming and 9.21 linear). This represents an increase on the previous quarter’s 27.83 million, and an increase on calendar Q3 2022’s 27.57 million.
Earlier this month, Lionsgate also confirmed plans to shut down the Starz streaming service in the UK and in Australia, following the earlier confirmation of the streaming service shutting down in Latin America.
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