Sling TV subscribers and earnings

Sling TV

Q1 2020 | Q4 2019 | Q3 2019 | Q2 2019 | Q1 2019 | Q4 2018 | Q3 2018

Sling TV Q1 2020 (May 7, 2020)

Dish Network — the parent company of Sling TV — on May 7, 2020 announced its first-quarter earnings for 2020. Here's what you need to know.

  • Sling TV is now down to 2.311 million subscribers after losing 281,000 for the quarter.
  • That's the second straight quarter of losses, after reaching a peak of 2.686 million subscribers in Q3 2019.
  • That leaves Sling tied for no better than second place in terms of subscribers in the United States . YouTube TV has more than 2 million subscribers, but we don't know how many more than that.

Sling TV Q4 2019 (Feb. 19, 2020)

Dish Network — parent company of Sling TV — on Feb. 19, 2020 announced its Q4 2019 earnings and year-end results. Here's what you need to know.

  • Sling TV now has 2.59 million subscribers, down from 2.686 at the end of the third quarter. (That's a loss of 96,000 subs.)
  • That puts Sling TV squarely in at least a tie for second place in terms of subscribers in the United States. YouTube TV has reported more than 2 million subscribers.
  • Sling added 175,000 net subscribers in 2019, down from 205,000 in 2018.
  • As part of the approval of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, Dish Network is getting into the mobile business, having picked up Sprint's prepaid holdings like Boost and Virgin Mobile, and it'll get T-Mobile's prepaid business as well.
  • Dish is required to have nationwide prepaid service up and running within a year of the closing of the Sprint/T-Mobile deal.

Sling TV Q3 2019 earnings (Nov. 7, 2019)

Dish Network — which owns Sling TV — today issued its earnings report for the third quarter of 2019. Here's what you need to know:

  • Sling TV now has 2.686 million subscribers, with a net addition of 214,000 subs.
  • By comparison, Sling added 26,000 net subscriptions in Q3 2018.
  • Sling's total number of subscribers is up about 316,000 — a little more than 13 percent — from Q3 2018.
  • Average revenue per user continues to drop because Sling TV subscribers buy less-expensive programming than Dish TV subscribers.
  • Dish notes that what it paid for programming actually decreased a little in Q3 when AT&T and Fox pulled some channels from Sling's service .

Sling TV Q2 2019 earnings (July 29, 2019)

Dish Network — Sling TV's parent company — today released its earnings report for the second quarter of 2019. Here's what you need to know:

  • There are now some 2.472 million Sling TV subscribers.
  • That's an addition of about 48,000 Sling subscribers for the quarter.
  • Sling has added about 55,000 net subscribers this year.
  • It added 132,000 net subscribers in the first six months of 2018.
  • Sling noted the loss of Fox Regional Sports Networks
  • (Its users also noticed.)

Sling TV Q1 2019 earnings (May 3, 2019)

Dish Network — the parent company of Sling — on released its earnings report for the first quarter of 2019. Here's what you need to know:

  • Dish Network as a hole is still bleeding pay-TV subscribers, shedding 259,000 in the first three months of the year. It lost 94,000 in the first three months of 2018.
  • Those losses were (slightly) offset by the addition of 7,000 Sling subscribers.
  • (And that doesn't count people currently on a free trial.)
  • Sling TV now has a total of 2.424 million subscribers.
  • That's still enough to keep it No. 1 in our list of the largest live streaming providers .

Sling TV Q4 2018 earnings (Feb. 13, 2019)

Dish Network has released its Q4 2018 and year-end earnings .

Here's what you need to know:

  • Sling TV now has some 2.417 million subscribers, up from 2.37 million at the close of the previous quarter.
  • That's still more than any other streaming service.
  • Sling added approximately 205,000 net subscribers for all of 2018, down from 711,000 in 2017.
  • Dish says that's mostly from increased competition, "and due to a higher number of customer disconnects on a larger Sling TV subscriber base."
  • And it blames that , at least in part, on "the impact from Univision and AT&T's removal of certain of their channels from our programming lineup."
  • Specifically, it points to AT&T removing HBO and Cinemax as an option for Sling customers in October 2018.
  • (AT&T, of course, owns DirecTV Now, which directly competes with Sling TV.)
  • Dish lost a total of approximately 920,000 net pay TV subscribers in 2018.

Sling TV Q3 2018 earnings (Nov. 11, 2018)

Dish Network — the parent company of Sling TV — today announced its third-quarter earnings. Here's what you need to know:

  • Sling added approximately 26,000 subscribers for July through October. (It added 41,000 subscribers in Q2, and 91,000 in Q1.)
  • That brings Sling up to some 2.37 million subscribers in total.
  • Total subscribers to Dish Networks' pay service — which includes its satellite service — fell from just under 13 million to 10.286 million total subscribers.
  • That's a loss of 341,000 pay subscribers in the third quarter.
  • Net pay-TV subscribers declined approximately 341,000 in the third quarter, compared with an increase of approximately 16,000 in the third quarter 2017.
  • That's more than a 2,000 percent increase in net losses year over year.
  • Dish's net income was $432 million for the third quarter 2018, up from $297 million during the same quarter in 2017.
  • Dish Network's 2018 year-to-date revenue totaled $10.31 billion, compared with $10.91 billion in revenue from the same period last year.

What's that mean for you as a subscriber? Not much, really, though Sling has (like other providers) implemented a price increase earlier this year.