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November 7, 2025
EchoStar’s 10-year-old virtual multichannel video program distribution (vMVPD) pioneer Sling TV upped its paid subscriber base 11% to 1.99 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from 1.79 million subs in the previous-year period.
EchoStar’s Dish brand lost 152,000 satellite TV subscribers to end the period with 5.2 million. EchoStar combines the two platforms for 7.17 million combines subs, up 1.3% from 7.07 million in the previous-year period.
Sling benefited in the quarter from rolling out single-day, weekend, weekly subscription tiers priced from $5, targeting the start of college, NFL and NBA seasons.
The satellite and vMVPD business segments generated about $2.34 billion in revenue for the third quarter.
Meanwhile, EchoStar co-founder Charlie Ergen re-assumed the CEO position, while former CEO Hamid Akhavan was appointed to serve as the CEO of EchoStar Capital.
The move comes after EchoStar’s spectrum sell-off transactions — one with AT&T for $22.65 billion and the other with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for $19 billion.
The transactions were instrumental in resolving the FCC’s review of the company’s spectrum utilization. Following the announcements of the transactions, the FCC confirmed EchoStar had met all 5G network buildout requirements and other related obligations had been fully satisfied. In addition, EchoStar announced an amended agreement with SpaceX to sell its unpaired AWS-3 wireless spectrum for $2.6 billion in SpaceX stock.
“Through EchoStar Capital we will fuel EchoStar’s growth into new and complementary arenas, beyond its satellite, streaming, wireless and enterprise business units,” Akhavan said in a statement. “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.”
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