Starz Content Acquisition Strategy: A 2026 Guide

What Is Starz’s Content Strategy After the Lionsgate Split?

Since fully separating from Lionsgate in May 2025, Starz CEO Jeff Hirsch has said the company is moving toward owning roughly half its slate by 2027, targeting 8-10 original series per year, anchored around the Power universe and continued female-led, action-driven originals. Hirsch outlined the strategy in a May 2025 interview covering the future of the standalone company, per Deadline’s coverage.

Per a Deadline report from May 2026 (verified via search-aggregation and cross-referenced coverage, since the Deadline page itself returned a paywall block on direct fetch), Hirsch projected total content spend falling from $700 million in 2026 to roughly $650 million by 2028, driven by leaning on international co-financing and younger, lower-cost early seasons. Upcoming titles cited in 2026 press coverage include Power spinoffs, Outlander: Blood of My Blood season 2, and a Michael biopic.

How Was the Lionsgate Split Actually Structured?

The split was structured as a SPAC transaction valuing Lionsgate Studios at $4.6 billion, confirmed in December 2023 reporting from Variety and Deadline covering the Starz spinoff agreement. Post-separation, Starz shed international Lionsgate+ operations across seven territories, choosing instead to focus capital on its US streaming-and-linear bundle strategy while relying on licensing partners such as Netflix and Sky for global reach rather than operating its own international platforms.

This is a structurally different approach than a platform like Peacock, which continues to operate its own international distribution ambitions alongside domestic content — Starz has explicitly chosen to trade direct international ownership for licensing partnerships, a tradeoff worth understanding before pitching international rights to Starz specifically.

What Does the Netflix-Power Licensing Deal Mean for Starz?

Netflix acquired international rights to Power, Power Book II: Ghost, Power Book III: Raising Kanan, and Power Book IV: Force, plus US rights to the original Power (moving from Hulu, where it had streamed since 2017), in a deal announced in July 2026 — but the deal is non-exclusive, excludes Canada, and excludes Starz’s upcoming Power: Origins and Power: Legacy spinoffs, which remain exclusive to Starz. Starz remains the primary US streaming home for the franchise, per Deadline’s July 2026 report, corroborated by a Yahoo Entertainment republish.

This is a meaningful signal for producers with franchise IP: rather than treating international licensing as a threat to a flagship franchise, Starz appears willing to license out breadth — older seasons, international reach — while protecting the newest, highest-value extensions exclusively for itself. A producer negotiating a similar franchise-licensing structure elsewhere should study this split-rights model as a template for how to monetize breadth without sacrificing control of the newest IP.

What Other Deals Has Starz Made Recently?

Starz Deal Activity, 2025-2026

Deal	Detail	Date
Lionsgate theatrical output deal, extended	Exclusive 1st/2nd pay-TV windows plus a new 3rd window for ~20 titles/year	Jan 2025
Sky co-commission, “Fightland”	Boxing drama exec-produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson; Starz’s first wholly-owned series	Feb 2026
Universal output/Pay-2 deal exited	$147M restructuring charge	Reflected in Q2 FY2026
Crunchyroll-Starz bundle on Prime Video	$16.99/month	Launched Jul 29, 2026
Canada restructuring	Moved from Bell Media joint venture to a direct content-licensing deal	Announced Nov 2025

The Lionsgate theatrical output extension, per Deadline’s January 2025 reporting and a PR Newswire release, covers titles including Now You See Me 3, Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, and Ballerina. The Fightland co-commission with Sky was reported by Deadline and Variety in February 2026. The Crunchyroll-Starz Prime Video bundle was confirmed by Deadline in July 2026.

How Is Starz Performing Financially?

Starz reported 17.6 million total subscribers at the end of FY2025 (12.7 million streaming, 5 million linear), adding 170,000 net subscribers on the strength of Power Book IV: Force season 3 and Spartacus: House of Ashur, per its February 26, 2026 earnings report covered by TheWrap. Q2 FY2026 revenue was $307.9 million, down 4% year-over-year; OTT revenue grew year-over-year for the first time since Q4 2024, reaching $221.3 million, while linear revenue fell 12% to $87 million; the quarter posted a net loss of $189.4 million, largely attributable to the Universal restructuring charge, per TheWrap’s Q2 FY2026 earnings coverage (August 2026).

How Is Starz Approaching International Distribution Now?

Starz is expanding internationally even as it consolidates domestic spend, using partner platforms for reach rather than rebuilding the kind of owned international infrastructure it shed after the Lionsgate split. The Crunchyroll bundle and the Netflix Power licensing deal both point to this same pattern: Starz’s Canada restructuring also moved from a Bell Media joint venture to a direct content-licensing deal in November 2025, a shift Starz said would be accretive to free cash flow, per Variety’s reporting. For international broadcasters and distributors, this means the entry point to a Starz relationship is increasingly a licensing or bundle negotiation, not a joint-venture equity structure.

How Do You Pitch Content to Starz?

No verifiable, official Starz submission-process, deal-structure, or revenue-share documentation exists publicly — general industry pitching guidance found in non-Starz-specific sources should not be presented as Starz policy. In practice, Starz’s confirmed deals (Sky co-commission, Lionsgate output extension, Crunchyroll bundle) all route through existing studio, network, or platform relationships rather than open submissions, consistent with how most premium cable/streaming networks operate. Vitrina’s broader content acquisition strategy guide covers this relationship-first pattern across most premium buyers. Vitrina’s broader guide to film and TV distribution and content acquisition covers how these relationship-driven pitch structures work across buyer types.

Notably, Starz has continued expanding internationally even as it consolidates domestic spend: the Crunchyroll bundle and the Netflix Power licensing deal both point to a strategy of using partner platforms for reach rather than building or maintaining owned international infrastructure, a sharp contrast to the pre-split Lionsgate+ model that operated standalone international services directly.

How Vitrina Helps You Track Starz’s Acquisition Activity

Vitrina maps Starz’s co-financing partners, output-deal structures, and franchise licensing activity — including moves like the Netflix-Power deal — so you can see where Starz is actively buying versus protecting exclusively. Read Vitrina’s broader guide to entertainment supply chain strategy for how this fits into the wider content acquisition landscape, or see how DAZN manages a similar rights-trading dynamic in the sports-content space.

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