Starz lost around 500,000 domestic streaming subscribers during the second calendar (first fiscal 2024) quarter of the year. With Starz also continuing to lose linear subscribers, the streaming service ended the most recent quarter with less subscribers than it started the quarter with.
Shortly before the end of the second quarter, Starz implemented a price increase. As a result of this price change, the cost of a subscription increased from 8.99 to $9.99 a month in the US.
Starz had 11.8 million OTT (streaming) domestic subscribers, as of June 30, according to Lionsgate’s latest quarterly results. This represented a decrease of around 500,00 when compared to the 12.3 million subscribers reported at the end of the first calendar quarter of the year.
This also resulted in an almost identical year-over-year subscriber drop. As of June 30, 2022, Starz had 12.2 million domestic streaming subscribers, resulting in a year-over-year decrease of 400,000.
On the domestic linear side of things, the situation was largely the same. Starz ended the first calendar quarter with 8 million linear subscribers and ended the most recent quarter with 7.7 million, resulting in a drop of 300,000.
Starz has been consistently losing linear subscribers in the US every quarter for some time now, so this also resulted in a year-over-year drop of around 1.5 million domestic linear subscribers.
When taking both linear and streaming into consideration, Starz ended the most recent quarter with a total of 19.5 million domestic subscribers. This was down 800,000 from the 20.3 million reported at the end of the previous quarter, and down 1.9 million on the same quarter in 2022.
In terms of the global numbers, Starz ended the most recent quarter with a total of 29.4 million domestic and intentional subscribers. Although this was less than the 29.7 million reported at the end of the previous quarter, it is an increase of 100,000 on the second calendar quarter of 2022.
As part of Lionsgate’s latest earning report, the company also confirmed that it made the “strategic decision” to focus its Starz operations on the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, and this involves closing down of Starz in Latin America by December 31st.
