Starz ended the last calendar quarter with 11.5 million domestic streaming subscribers, an increase over the previous quarter and the previous year. Similar to many other subscription-based services, Starz has been seeing an ever-increasing switch from linear to streaming. At the same time, Starz appears to be growing in general, resulting in a higher overall number of subscribers.
Starz is one of many premium networks that can be subscribed to directly with a standard subscription typically costing around $8.99 per month. Starz is also one of the few premium networks that can be added to a live TV streaming package. Bundling with a live TV plan also tends to result in an additional monthly charge of around $9, although the price of either direct or bundling can vary throughout the year due to sales and promotions.
Lionsgate, the parent company of Starz, released its fiscal fourth quarter earnings report today confirming the latest subscriber numbers. According to Lionsgate, Starz had 11.5 million domestic streaming subscribers as of March 31, 2022. This is 500,000 higher than the end of the previous quarter and 1.5 million higher than the end of the same quarter in 2021. If going back to June of 2020, the current 11.5 million represents an increase of 4.1 million OTT subscribers.
The report also confirmed that Starz closed the most recent quarter with 9.5 million domestic linear subscribers. This represented a decrease of around 400,000 when compared to the previous quarter and a decrease of 1.4 million when compared to the end of the same quarter in 2021. Again, if compared to June 2020, Starz lost 2.1 million linear subscribers.
Essentially, Starz now has as many domestic streaming subscribers as it did linear subscribers back in 2020. The difference, however, is that the number of linear subscribers has not decreased as much as the number of OTT subscribers has risen. This means that, when combining both linear and OTT subscribers, Starz closed the most recent quarter with 21 million domestic subscribers, which is 100,000 up on the last quarter and 2 million up when compared to June 2020.
When also factoring in international markets, including STARZPLAY International and STARZPLAY Arabia, the total number of Starz subscribers, linear and streaming, stood at 35.8 million as of March 31, 2022. This is an increase of 4.4 million over the last quarter and 11.6 million when compared to June 2020.
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