El Segundo, Calif. – DirecTV Group Inc., seizing on a court ruling against EchoStar Communications Inc., is offering some customers of the rival satellite-television service $150 to switch providers.
Subscribers to EchoStar’s Dish Network who are losing broadcast-network channels because of a federal court ruling also are being offered free equipment and installation, El Segundo-based DirecTV said in a statement.
The ruling creates an opportunity for News Corp.-controlled DirecTV, the largest U.S. satellite-TV service, to poach some of the 900,000 EchoStar customers affected by the ruling.
EchoStar and DirecTV battle each other and compete with cable and phone companies. The offer runs through December.
“For DirecTV, this is like picking up loose change on the ground,” Craig Moffett, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst, said in an e-mailed statement.
He has an “underperform” rating on both companies’ shares.
“The numbers won’t be big,” he said. “There just aren’t enough customers who are affected, but the opportunity is real and the customers are profitable.”
Under the ruling, Douglas County-based EchoStar, the second-largest satellite-TV service, faces a deadline Friday to turn off so-called distant-market signals for all of the affected customers. Most of the subscribers affected by the ruling are in rural areas.
Shares of EchoStar rose 39 cents to $36.08 in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. DirecTV rose 26 cents to $22.81 on the New York Stock Exchange.
