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Starz nets 29.5 million global subscribers, including 10 million U.S. streamers

Movie studio Lionsgate said on Thursday that its premium pay television network Starz now has more than 29.5 million global subscribers, including more than 10 million people in the United States who pay for the network as a streaming service.

The data was released as part of the company’s quarterly earnings report, which said the television media division of the company has brought in more than $400 million over the last 12 months, an increase of around 12 percent.



Globally, Lionsgate has attracted more than 16 million streaming customers for Starzplay, an international variant of the Starz movie service. In the United States, Starz has more than 10 million subscribers who pay the company around $9 a month to stream movies from the Lionsgate catalog along with licensed content from MGM and Sony Pictures.

Domestically, Starz is available on most cable and satellite services, as a direct-to-consumer streaming service and as an add-on through streaming platforms Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google Play Store and the Roku Channel.

Lionsgate touted original programming as one key to its success with Starz in the United States and abroad. The service also taps into a library of over 17,000 television and film titles whose production and distribution rights are held by its parent company.

“Fiscal 21 was a year of strong domestic and international subscriber growth at STARZ, great new television series, record library sales and a successful pivot to alternative release strategies for many of our films,” Jon Feltheimer, the chief executive of Lionsgate, said in a statement. “We enter Fiscal 22 with full content pipelines and with STARZ projected to achieve even better net subscriber adds domestically and internationally than in Fiscal 21.”

The rosy projection comes less than a month after Sony said it would end its distribution agreement with Starz in favor of a deal with Netflix. The deal, which starts next year, will allow Netflix to offer its subscribers new films from Sony after their first theatrical run. Starz will continue to offer Sony films through the end of this year.

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About the Author:

Matthew Keys

Matthew Keys is a nationally-recognized, award-winning journalist who has covered the business of media, technology, radio and television for more than 11 years. He is the publisher of The Desk and contributes to Know Techie, Digital Content Next and StreamTV Insider. He previously worked for Thomson Reuters, the Walt Disney Company, McNaughton Newspapers and Tribune Broadcasting.
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