Lionsgate+
 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
Website type | OTT platform |
| Available in | Arabic, Urdu, English, Indonesian, Korean, Mandarin, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Bhojpuri |
| Headquarters | United States, America |
| Area served | Australia, Belgium, United States, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Yemen, Djibouti, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Malaysia |
| Owner | Starz Entertainment |
| Products | Video streaming |
| Website | www starzplay lionsgateplay |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Users | 2.5 Million for Starzplay (As of 2026[update]) 14.8 Million for Lionsgate+ (As of 2026[update]) 37 Million for Lionsgate Play (As of 2023[update]) |
| Launched | April 2, 2015 |
| Current status | Active |
Lionsgate+ (previously Starzplay),[1] or also known as Starz (in the United States of America and Canada), Starzplay Arabia & Starz On (in the MENA region), Lionsgate Play (in the Southeast Asia region) is an International subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming television service owned by Starz Entertainment for viewers outside North America.
History
[edit]Development and Launch
[edit]
The original incarnation of Starzplay was a website and mobile app that featured original programming and feature film content from Starz available for streaming in standard or high definition. It was available to Starz subscribers of Verizon FIOS,[2] AT&T U-verse,[3] Cox Communications,[4] Xfinity by Comcast[5] and DirecTV[6] until it was merged with Starz.com on April 5, 2016. The former incarnation of the Starzplay online service (which is structured as a TV Everywhere-style service) was launched on October 8, 2012, with the release of the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch app[7] until they were merged with Starz.com on April 5, 2016.
The Starzplay name was borrowed from a prior service offered in conjunction with Netflix. It was created in 2008 after the subscription streaming service struck an agreement with Starz Entertainment to allow Netflix to sub-license rights to films from distributors that maintain output deals with the linear Starz channel for online viewing – in lieu of acquiring the digital distribution rights on its own, due to the expense of acquiring newer film titles – as Netflix was considered to be merely a "content aggregator". Because Netflix chose to sub-license digital rights through Starz instead of negotiating with the studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures threatened not to renew its output deal with Starz unless it either discontinued its deal with Netflix or paid Disney a licensing fee for digital streaming rights to its films (Netflix ended up assuming rights to most film releases by Walt Disney Studios from Starz in 2016).[8][9]
Starzplay (as a Netflix service) was first made available to Starz subscribers of the Verizon FiOS television service.[10] Starz content (including most of its original programming and series content that the channel acquired through domestic and foreign distributors) was made available on Netflix's "Watch Instantly" platform. It was the third subscription video-on-demand online streaming service operated by Starz: Starz Ticket operated from 2004 to 2006, under a joint venture between Starz Entertainment and RealNetworks.[11] Starz launched Vongo, a separate online movie service for subscribers, which operated from 2006[12] until it was discontinued on September 30, 2008.[13]
On September 1, 2011, Starz announced that it would not renew its streaming agreement with Netflix, which ended on February 28, 2012; movie titles that are available on DVD from Sony Pictures, Disney and other studios that maintain pay-TV distribution deals with Starz were not affected and can be acquired from Netflix by this method.[14] With the expiration of the Netflix deal, film content from studios with which Starz maintains broadcast rights were no longer available for online streaming, particularly as Netflix and certain similar services such as Vudu did not have separate streaming rights to films from these individual studios. Prior to the beta launch of its Starz Online service (which became Starzplay upon its official launch), Starz announced on November 18, 2011, that it was developing a streaming application for mobile devices, allowing the network's subscribers – and in early reports, speculation that possibly non-subscription television subscribers would be allowed as well – to view Starz's series and film content.[15] The app was released on October 9, 2012, for Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, and on May 7, 2013, for Android devices.[4][16] An app for authenticated subscribers for the Xbox 360 was released on December 3, 2013,[17] followed by a similar app for the Xbox One on August 5, 2014.[18]
Launch of Starzplay Arabia, international expansion and rebranding
[edit]Starzplay Arabia was the first Starz-branded service to be localized outside the United States, launching in collaboration with Peter Ekelund's Parsifal International on April 2, 2015, in 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, breaching those territories before its biggest competitor in media streaming being Netflix.[19][20] Starzplay Arabia remains available even as the U.S. version of the service has been discontinued.[21] In 2018, the service became available in Pakistan, as a joint venture between Cinepax, a cinema chain in Pakistan, and Lionsgate's StarzPlay Arabia.[22][23] In 2019, Starzplay was launched in Brazil and Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom).