BT had previously said that 500,000 customers of its total pay-TV base had signed up for its sports channels between 10 May and 25 July, with the majority being existing broadband customers.
This is the first time that Dish has broken out its Sling TV subscribers separately from its larger pay TV subscriber base, and confirms earlier estimates that Sling TV had grown to north of 2 million users.
As networks like HBO, Cinemax and Starz transition their pay TV subscriber base to streaming TV services and over-the-top offerings, they too need to better position themselves as services the whole family can enjoy.
The move comes at a time when Verizon is struggling to grow its pay TV subscriber base – the company added just 20,000 subscriptions in Q4 2015, down from 116,000 in the year-ago period.
"Comcast is one of the country's leading pay TV providers with a customer base that, like ours, consists of people who are passionate about the movies they love," said Karin Gilford, General Manager, Movies Anywhere, in a statement.
A recent study from tech analyst Parks Associates predicted HBO Now could chip 7% off the pay-TV subscriber base.
Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League, said the free-to-air highlights deal is "extremely important" to extend the reach of the competition beyond the BSkyB's pay-TV subscriber base.
Its pay-TV subscriber base currently stands at 8.17 million–but Murdoch wants to reach 10 million by 2010.
There's also a customer base who still likes their pay TV subscription, of course, even if those dynamics are changing.
BSkyB said that a focus on marketing its TV products, which include cheaper internet service Now TV, had paid off with 74,000 new subscribers in the period taking the total TV base to 10.6 million.
Ultimately, from his base at the Hughes Electronics subsidiary of General Motors, he developed DirecTV into what is now the fifth-biggest pay TV provider in the U.S, and the preeminent name in pay-per-view.
