Goldman Sachs analyst Brett Feldman says Dish Network's (NASDAQ: DISH) Sling TV could finish 2016 with as many as 2 million subscribers, offsetting huge predicted losses for Dish in its core satellite TV business.
In a report to investors, Feldman estimates that Dish finished the third quarter with 346,000 Sling TV subscribers. He believes Dish is on pace to lose 724,000 satellite TV customers this year, up from 534,000 last year.
Dish has combined its Sling TV customer acquisitions with its satellite subscriber losses in recent earnings reports, without offering much in the way of details. The only released metric so far is a June 30 report by Dish indicating that Sling had 240,000 subs at the time.
The analyst bases his Sling prediction on whether Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) continues to dawdle with its over-the-top pay-TV service. If Apple emerges from the sidelines with its own streaming service, that could change the competitive outcome for Sling.
Sling, meanwhile, continues to entice subscribers with hardware add-ons, the latest being over-the-air antennas. The IP-based pay-TV service is offering a $50 discount on OTA antennas from RCA and Terk.
This comes after an earlier promotion offering Roku set-tops.
For more:
- read this Seeking Alpha report
- read this Investors story
- read this Multichannel News story
- visit this Sling TV product page
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