Dish Network saw its net pay TV subscriber losses more than double across its satellite and streaming services during the fourth quarter.
The company lost 273,000 video customers during the final quarter of 2021, compared to a decrease of approximately 133,000 during the same quarter of 2020. Approximately 70,000 of the quarterly losses can be attributed to Sling TV and the other 200,000 to Dish TV.
For the full year, the company reported approximately 595,000 net Dish TV losses (compared to 408,000 in 2020) partially offset by approximately 12,000 net Sling TV subscriber additions (compared to a net loss of 118,000 in 2020). It ended 2021 with 8.22 million Dish TV subscribers and 2.49 million Sling TV subscribers.
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Dish Network attributed the higher subscriber losses to lower gross new Dish TV subscriber activations and a slightly higher Dish TV churn rate while pointing out that Sling TV continues to face challenges from competing services.
The back half of the year has typically been better for gross pay TV additions at Dish Network but the company warned that seasonal trends may be shifting as cord cutting continues.
“…In recent years, as the pay TV industry has matured, we and our competitors increasingly must seek to attract a greater proportion of new subscribers from each other’s existing subscriber bases rather than from first-time purchasers of pay TV services. As a result, historical trends in seasonality described above may not be indicative of future trends,” the company wrote in an SEC filing.
Despite the higher pay TV losses, Dish Network saw its full-year revenue climb slightly from $12.7 billion to $12.75 billion, thanks at least in part to a 4.5% increase in pay TV average revenue per user, which reached nearly $96 in 2021.