Dish’s Sling TV wins support
February 23, 2016
By Chris Forrester
Last week’s Dish Network results tended to focus on founder Charlie Ergen’s statement that pay-TV was now a mature market. Indeed, overall his US pay-TV service Dish Network lost some 81,000 subscribers. But there’s an upside to the story.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Ergen’s new baby, Dish’s Sling TV ‘pay-TV lite’ streaming service has captured more than 600,000 customers and this in barely a year since launch.
Back at the end of March last year its declared subscriber base was 169,000.
At the time Sling TV’s CEO Roger Lynch said that the new ‘lite’ pay-TV model was winning support from outside pay television’s normal customer universe.
One independent report (from Evercore ISI) estimates that Sling TV added 53.000 clients in Q4/2015, while MoffettNathanson suggest that the service added 129,000 to reach a total of 523,000 at the end of 2014.