Starz raised its monthly price to $11.99 in June 2026 and still added subscribers in the same quarter, CEO Jeff Hirsch told analysts on the company's Q2 2026 earnings call on 7 August. The platform declined to disclose a specific subscriber count, consistent with its earlier decision to stop breaking out that number. Starz ended 2025 with 17.6 million subscribers, the last confirmed figure on record.

The price increase was first announced on Starz's Q1 2026 earnings call in May, when management said it would flow through the subscriber base starting in Q2. The hike to $11.99 per month took effect in June. That subscribers grew at all during a billing change is the detail Hirsch flagged for analysts — a price rise typically pushes some customers to cancel.

Revenue told a more complicated story. Starz reported Q2 2026 revenue of $307.9 million, edging Wall Street expectations but down 4% from $319.7 million in the same quarter a year ago. Net losses widened sharply to $189.4 million, or $11.27 per share, according to The Wrap. A big driver was a $147.2 million charge tied to the end of Starz's output deal with Universal — an arrangement under which Universal's films had been licensed to the platform. The charge reflects the writedown of content Starz will no longer receive through that pipeline.

Starz completed its separation from Lionsgate in 2025, ending a corporate relationship of nearly a decade. Since then it has been operating as a standalone company, which means every deal it strikes and every dollar it loses lands on its own balance sheet rather than a parent's.

Hirsch pointed to two bright spots for engagement. Q2 2026 was the second-highest engagement quarter in the company's history, he said, and the boxing series Fightland posted the second-best debut of any Starz original after launching in early August. Hirsch also noted that Fightland costs about $2.5 million per episode — cheaper, he said, than the programming Starz previously sourced from Lionsgate Television.

Two upcoming content moves round out the picture. Lionsgate's film Michael, a billion-dollar box-office hit, was set to debut on Starz the week after the earnings call. Separately, Starz struck a global deal with Netflix for the first four series in the Power franchise, while retaining exclusive rights to all sequels, prequels and spinoffs under that franchise. Licensing a show to a rival platform brings in revenue; keeping the future of the franchise exclusive preserves Starz's long-term hold on its most durable property. (Deadline, The Wrap)