Sling TV (Sling TV L.L.C.) is a US over-the-top (OTT) live-streaming television provider and a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (Nasdaq: SATS). It launched on February 9, 2015 as a Dish Network initiative aimed at cord-cutters and became part of EchoStar when Dish merged into EchoStar at the end of 2023. Its headquarters are at EchoStar's Englewood, Colorado campus. Sling does not report standalone headcount or revenue; its parent reports roughly 12,100 employees and ~7 million pay-TV subscribers (Dish TV plus Sling) as of early 2025.
Operations: Sling is a virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD), selling subscription live-linear and on-demand channel packages delivered over the internet rather than satellite. Its main offerings are the single-stream Sling Orange and multi-stream Sling Blue packages (sold separately or bundled), plus Sling Latino and Sling International services, à-la-carte "Extras," pay-per-view, and a cloud DVR. Since 2023 it has also operated Sling Freestream, a free ad-supported streaming service. EchoStar's SEC filings reported about 1.89 million Sling TV subscribers as of March 31, 2025. The company is an operating business, not a licensing shell.
Patent-litigation posture: Sling appears in the tracked data as a defendant only (1 case, 0 as plaintiff), consistent with an operating company being targeted rather than an aggressor. The sole tracked matter is Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Hulu et al. before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation — the JPML proceeding arising from Realtime's 2018 motion to consolidate its parallel suits, which the Panel denied. EchoStar's own filings describe Realtime Adaptive Streaming as "an entity that seeks to license an acquired patent portfolio without itself practicing any of the claims recited therein" — i.e., a non-practicing entity.
Context: The underlying dispute, Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Sling TV, L.L.C. (D. Colo. No. 1:17-cv-02097), asserted US Patents 8,867,610 and 8,934,535, covering video/audio data compression. Sling and its Dish affiliates contested the patents via IPR, ex parte reexamination, and §101 motions; the district court granted summary judgment of invalidity in July 2021, affirmed by the Federal Circuit in May 2023, and the asserted claims were ultimately canceled. That history reflects the streaming-compression technology focus of the campaign against Sling.