{"id":281531,"date":"2025-11-14T01:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T01:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/281531\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T01:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T01:11:08","slug":"starz-restructures-canadian-business-from-joint-venture-with-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/281531\/","title":{"rendered":"Starz Restructures Canadian Business From Joint Venture With Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tStarz<\/a> is restructuring its operations in Canada from a joint venture with Canadian media giant Bell Media<\/a> to a content licensing deal with the company.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cToday, we are announcing a structural change to our Canadian operation,\u201d Starz president and CEO Jeffrety Hirsch said Thursday during the company\u2019s latest quarterly earnings call. \u201cWe are moving from a joint venture model to a stable, consistent content licensing agreement with our partner Bell Canada. Under this new simplified structure, the Starz-branded service will continue to be available in Canada and Starz will generate international licensing revenue, while Bell will assume full operational responsibility in the territory. This approach is consistent with our strategy of owning our content and creating incremental licensing revenue without the need to operate international services directly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a result of this change, starting with the next quarter, Starz will no longer reported Canadian subscribers.<\/p>\n

\n\tStarz says it ended the third quarter, which ran July-September, with 12.3 million U.S. OTT subscribers \u2014 an increase of 110,000 customers. Overall U.S. subscribers stood at 17.5 million for Starz, a drop of 130,000. Including Canada, total North American subscribers were 19.2 million, an increase of 120,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tHirsch says this deal, which comes six months after Starz became a standalone company following its spin off from Lionsgate, will \u201cbe modestly accretive to Adjusted OIBDA and free cash flow in calendar 2026.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Starz CEO says production has already begun on the company\u2019s first-owned series \u201cFightland\u201d and teased a co-commission partner that, along with the Bell Media deal, \u201cwill assist us on our path to reaching 20% margins exiting calendar 2028.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThis change in the relationship with Bell comes on the heels of Starz facing a recent \u201ccarriage dispute in Canada that resulted in the removal of the Starz-branded linear channel from a distributor\u2019s programming packages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Q3, Wall Street forecast\u00a0a loss of earnings\u00a0per share (EPS) of $1.86 on $321 million in revenue for Starz, according to analyst consensus data provided by FactSet. Starz reported a loss per share of $3.15 on $321 million in revenue.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn releasing these results, Starz reaffirmed its outlook of generating approximately $200 million of adjusted OIBDA by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

\n\t(Pictured above: Starz\u2019s \u201cOutlander: Blood of My Blood.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starz is restructuring its operations in Canada from a joint venture with Canadian media giant Bell Media to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[92263,49,48,75,35381,25271,348],"class_list":["post-281531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bell-media","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-media-earnings","tag-starz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}