Wallet-friendly streaming television service Philo now has 1.3 million subscribers paying to watch its portfolio of general entertainment, lifestyle and knowledge channels, the company said on Tuesday.
The new subscriber count is around 300,000 more customers than what Philo revealed around this time last year, after it crossed the milestone 1 million subscriber mark. Philo is a privately-held company and does not regularly provide updates on its subscriber growth.
Philo is also not required to regularly reveal how much money the company earns, but did so in a rare update this week, when it said the company took in $450 million in total revenue during 2024. The company did not provide information on how much of that revenue was considered profit or other data points such as its operational expenses, but says it expects full profitability next year.
Initially launched as Tivli in 2010, the company has transformed from a provider of live TV services mainly targeted to colleges and universities into one of the country’s premiere cable TV alternatives, focused on delivering low-cost general entertainment, lifestyle and knowledge channels to streamers who want access to networks like A&E, the History Channel, Lifetime and Comedy Central, and who are comfortable getting their local news and sports programming elsewhere.
The focus on entertainment and lifestyle channels, while shying away from most news and sports programming, means Philo is able to charge substantially less than other streaming cable TV replacements on the market. Today, a Philo subscription costs $28 per month after a free trial period, unlocks access to more than 80 premium cable networks, over 100 free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and offers even more premium content from AMC Plus, which is included with Philo’s base subscription tier at no extra cost.
To help the service further grow, Philo announced on Tuesday it has hired Edward King as its Chief Product Officer. King previously worked at Tubi, Fox’s FAST platform that offered a stream of Super Bowl LIX on Sunday.
King joined Philo last month, and has helped the company further evolve its content discovery, live TV experience and standalone FAST platform, the company said in a statement. (Philo’s 100 FAST channels used to require a subscription to access, but the channels became available without a paid plan for the first time last year.) Noting Tubi’s offering of the Super Bowl, a Philo spokesperson affirmed that the company is adopting the same playbook by further integrating FAST offerings into Philo’s core platform, and that King will help Philo further scale its FAST offering.
The company continues to count AMC Networks, A+E Networks, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global among its strategic investors. On Tuesday, Philo revealed tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban is also one of its investors. Cuban is the founder of AXS TV, a specialty channel now owned by Anthem Sports & Entertainment that is offered on Philo.
Philo noted its executive team includes former employees of HBO, Comcast and X (Twitter), as well as a co-founder of Facebook. Andrew McCollum, Philo’s CEO, attended Harvard University and was on the team that developed and launched Facebook.
