Santa Monica, Calif.-headquartered Starz Entertainment is implementing a structural change to its Canadian operations, amending its joint venture with Bell Media into a licensing agreement.

The company’s CEO Jeff Hirsch informed investors of the realignment during the company’s Q3 2025 call on Thursday (Nov. 13).

“Under this new simplified structure, the Starz-branded service will continue to be available in Canada and Starz will generate international licensing revenue, while Bell will resume full operational responsibility in the territory,” said Hirsch.

He added that the structural change is consistent with Starz’s strategy of owning its content and creating licensing revenue without needing to operate international services directly.

In addition, beginning with its December results, the company will no longer report the service’s Canadian subscribers, said CFO Scott Macdonald later in the call.  He added that the content licensing revenue from the agreement “will be a component of linear and other revenue in our statements of operations.”

In a statement from a Bell Media spokesperson, the company confirmed that it “has a content and brand licensing deal with Starz. Starz continues to operate as a premium add-on to Crave and remains an independently-offered service, operated by Bell Media, via television providers and Amazon Prime Video subscriptions.”

Starz, which separated from Lionsgate on May 7 after receiving approval from shareholders, first came to Canada in 2019 through a pact between Bell Media and Lionsgate.

The agreement saw Bell Media’s The Movie Network channel Encore rebranded as Starz, and the service included as an add-on to Crave. The agreement also gave Bell Media first-window access to Lionsgate’s slate of features.

Starz’s Q3 results reported a total of 1.74 million Canadian subscribers. During the quarter, the company’s revenue was US$320.9 million, down year-over-year (YOY) from US$346.9 million. Its operating loss was US$34.8 million, up YOY from a loss of US$17 million.

Starz programming on Crave includes series such as Power (pictured) and BMF, and films such as Armor.

Image courtesy of Bell Media