Never before has Dish reported Sling TV subscribers separately but it has now done that for the very first time. Sling TV is Dish’s standalone online TV streaming service that has been around for a few years now. The company reports that Sling TV subscribers have grown by 47 percent to reach over 2.2 million.
The company adds that Sling TV is the top live and on-demand online streaming service. It has consistently added new content sources and features to the service to offer more value for money to subscribers.
Dish confirmed in its year-end financial results for 2017 that Sling TV subscribers account for 2.2 million of its 13.2 million pay-TV subscribers. This is a 47 percent year-over-year growth which is in contrast to the legacy satellite TV service which actually lost more than a million subscribers throughout 2017.
Sling TV is comfortably in the lead with rivals like AT&T’s DirecTV Now boasting some 1.2 million subscribers while Sony’s PlayStation Vue streaming service is expected to have around 670,000 subscribers.
Dish has also detailed Sling TV’s subscriber growth in its latest filing. The service had 623,000 subscribers in its first year which surged to 1.5 million by the end of 2016. It then saw another surge to 2.2 million by the end of last year.
The standalone online TV streaming market is quite competitive now than it used to be when Sling TV was launched but it goes to show that Dish’s strategy to move into this space quickly has been paying dividends for the company.