Starz CEO Jeff Hirsch said total subscribers rose in the second quarter despite a price increase taking effect during the period.
Speaking to Wall Street analysts Friday on the company’s quarterly earnings call, Hirsch declined to state a number of subscribers, in keeping with the company’s decision to stop breaking out that metric. The company ended 2025 with 17.6 million subscribers.
Hirsch said it is “very rare” for subscribers to increase at the same time prices rise. “So, there’s real strength of the business on both sides of the revenue equation,” he said.
The most recent increase, to $11.99 a month, took effect in June.
Prior to the call, Starz reported a mixed set of financial results for the second quarter. Revenue edged Wall Street expectations, coming in at $307.9 million, but slipped 4% from its year-ago level of $319.7 million. Net losses widened to $189.4 million, but the company also disclosed a charge of $147.2 million due to the end of its output deal with Universal.
Starz shares, which have more than doubled in 2026 to date, drifted down 2% in pre-market trading. The company completed its separation from Lionsgate, which owned it for nearly a decade, in 2025.
Alison Hoffman, president of domestic networks chief, was asked about the company’s recent deal with Netflix for the first four series in the Power franchise. She said the global deal “creates an opportunity for us. It’s a way for us to introduce the franchise to new audiences, new viewers. and really reinvigorate it.”
She noted that Starz retains exclusive rights to all sequels, prequels and spinoffs to the show. Its recent installments are really driving the business in terms of engagement and first title streaming and subscriber acquisition. So yes, we think it’s a good thing. It is part of our strategy as programming gets mature. We think that’s syndication model actually works for us.”
On a similar note, Hirsch said the exit from the Universal post-pay-1 arrangement is a positive step. He was asked how much of the company’s overall programming was represented by the Universal titles. “We haven’t aired those titles in almost a year and a half because we were working with Universal, who wanted to keep them fresh. There’s absolutely almost zero viewership or engagement tied to those titles.” When they did air, he added, “we were paying, pay-2 prices for library performance. And so we’ve been able to reinvest some of the savings into buying library to actually drive more engagement.”
Engagement in the second quarter, Hirsch added, was the second-highest in Starz history.
Activity in the current third quarter also received mentions during the call. Michael, a billion-dollar movie hit for Lionsgate, will debut next week on Starz. And Fightland, which was released last week, had the second-best debut of any Starz original. The boxing series launched as Power Book III: Raising Kanan was wrapping its fifth and final season with healthy viewership.
Hirsch said Fightland also offers an appealing financial profile. “It’s doing exactly what we designed it to do, which is to serve the audience that we have, lower churn, extend engagement, extend lifetime value at a cost that is much more reasonable than we’ve gotten from the prior parent,” he said, referring to former owner Lionsgate.
Fightland, he said, costs about $2.5 million per episode, making it “cheaper” than the kind of programming the company used to source from Lionsgate Television. “It’s the same amount of content, just much cheaper cost,” Hirsch said.
