Dish Loses 202,000 Satellite Subs, 55,000 Sling Customers in 2Q

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Net income falls 22% to $671 million

A Dish technician standing outside a company van.
(Image credit: Dish)

Dish Network said it lost about 202,000 satellite subscribers and 55,000 Sling TV customers in the second quarter as viewers continued to leave traditional pay TV.

Net income fell 22% to $623 million, or 82 cents a share, from $671 million ($1.06 a share) a year ago. Revenue dropped 6%, to $4.21 billion.

Dish said it finished the quarter with 9.988 million pay-TV subscribers (satellite and virtual), down from 10.246 million in the first quarter. Dish had 10.993 million pay-TV customers a year ago.

Also: Cord Cutting Quickens in Q2 for Comcast, Charter and Verizon, But Where Are All of Those Customers Going?

Dish had 7.791 million satellite TV customers at the end of the second quarter, down from 7.993 million at the end of the first quarter and 8.554 million at the end of the second quarter a year earlier.

Dish’s Sling TV virtual MVPD ended the first quarter with 2.197 million subscribers, down from 2.252 million in the first quarter. A year ago Sling had 2.439 million customers.

Sling was one of the first broadband based pay-TV providers. Recently, Google said its YouTube TV vMVPD had topped the 5 million subscriber mark.

Dish said average revenue per customer (ARPU) was up, though, to $101.30 in the second quarter, from $99.44 in the first quarter and $96.32 a year ago. ■

Jon Lafayette
Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.