A satellite antenna used by Dish Network. (Photo by Ryan Finnie via Wikimedia Commons)
Echostar continued to experience ongoing pain in its legacy satellite television business during the third quarter (Q3) of the year, but things were much brighter at its streaming cable alternative Sling TV thanks to the introduction of more-flexible packages, including a new Day Pass feature.
The number of streamers paying for Sling TV rose to 159,000 during Q3, including 51,000 customers who are now paying for flexible access to its Sling Orange or Sling Blue base programming tiers.
Those new packages include Sling Select, which offers Fox News and NFL Network for $20 per month, and Sling’s Day Pass feature that unlocks access to the ESPN-inclusive Sling Orange tier for as little as $5.
Sling TV ended Q3 with 1.995 million customers, up 11 percent on a sequential basis, as the start of the National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA) seasons enticed sports fans to the service.
It was a different picture at Dish Network, which remains the larger of the two services by subscriber count but continues to struggle with ongoing churn. Dish lost 152,000 subscribers to end the quarter with around 5.17 million customers, according to financial filings reviewed by The Desk.
In its press release, Echostar opted to count Dish and Sling TV subscribers as a collective, reporting 7.17 million customers, around 1.3 percent higher compared to Q2.
Revenue attributed to Echostar’s pay TV businesses clocked in at $2.34 billion, down 10 percent compared to last year, while average revenue per user (ARPU) increased 1 percent to just under $104. Echostar’s ARPU is averaged across the more-expensive Dish and cheaper Sling TV, while its revenue includes advertising and subscription sales associated with both products.
On the broadband side, Echostar earned $346 million during Q3, down 10.6 percent, while Boost Mobile and its other wireless products generated $939 million, up 4.5 percent. Echostar ended the quarter with 783,000 broadband subscribers and 7.52 million wireless lines served. Wireless churn was measured at just under 2.9 percent, Echostar said.
Total revenue across all Echostar business units was $3.61 billion, down 7.1 percent on a year-over basis.
Moving forward, Echostar said it will sell AWS-3 licenses to SpaceX for around $2.6 billion in stock as part of a broader agreement the companies entered into during the summer. Money from that transaction and others will be used to invest in new parts of the industry through a new company called Echostar Capital, which launched on Thursday.
“Echostar will soon be in the unique position of having substantial available capital, vastly changing its scope of opportunities. Through Echostar Capital we will fuel Echostar’s growth into new and complementary arenas, beyond its successful pay-TV, wireless and enterprise business units,” said Hamid Akhavan, the CEO of Echostar. “This is an opportune moment in time for our business to go on the offense as we build upon our 45-year institutional heritage and forge a new path forward for creating and developing opportunities in our strategic expertise domains that will provide attractive value creation for Echostar and its shareholders.”
