Sling TV rolls out user profiles, promises faster pace of innovation in 2023

Dish-owned live TV streaming service Sling TV is looking to catch up with competitors with the launch of new features like user profiles and the promise of more changes to come in 2023. The company began quietly rolling out the user profiles feature just ahead of the Consumer Electronic Show last week, initially on Android TV and Fire TV devices, with support for more platforms in the near future.

Over the past several months, it’s also expanded its newer direct-to-consumer subscription integrations with the addition of discovery+, which joins 50 other services now available through Sling. And it’s made a Sports Scores feature available across Roku, Fire TV and Android TV devices.

Sports Scores has been rolling out to users since last year, making it easier to access scores from NFL, college football, NBA, NHL and MLB games while continuing to watch live TV or on-demand programming. Meanwhile, Sling TV’s subscription lineup, which now nears 50 services, has been available since last August.

Combined with the rollout of user profiles (which had not yet been formally announced), the changes suggest a streamer that’s again trying to innovate to attract subscribers.

Though one of the early leaders in live TV streaming, having launched in 2015, Sling TV lost traction as newer services like Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV arrived on the market. For the first three quarters last year, Sling TV faced subscriber losses, for example. However, the company more recently reversed that downward trend in its Q3 2022 earnings in November, when it reported a total of 2.41 million subscribers after 214,000 net additions. But this figure is still down from the 2.6 million subscribers Sling TV had in the third quarter of 2021, for comparison.

Sling TV needs to do more — and faster. Tech Crunch