ENGLEWOOD, Colo.—Dish Network reported that during the first quarter of 2020 it lost 413,000 pay-TV subscriptions. While the company cites the COVID-19 outbreak as impacting its numbers in various ways, the net decrease of subscribers represents a year-over-year increase from the 259,000 it lost in Q1 2019.
Among the lost subscribers were commercial customers who had Dish services paused or provided temporary rate relief as customers were no longer utilizing the Dish services. This represented 250,000 subscribers that Dish removed from its pay-TV subscriber count as of March 31. If commercial accounts are reactivated in the future, Dish says it will not count them as gross new subscriber additions.
However, for the first time, according to TVT’s sister publication Next|TV, Sling TV subscriber loss outpaced that of the satellite TV division. Sling TV lost 281,000 subscribers in Q1, compared to satellite’s 132,000
The total number of pay-TV subscribers for Dish at the end of Q1 2020 was 11.32 million—9.01 million for Dish TV and 2.31 million for Sling TV.
Overall, net earnings for Dish fell to $73 million in Q1 2020 from $340 million over the same period last year.
For more information, visit ir.dish.com.
