who owns starz

Starz is now an independent, publicly traded company, not fully owned by any single media giant.

Who owns Starz right now?

After being a subsidiary of Lionsgate for years, Starz was separated and is now structured as its own company with a dispersed shareholder base. It no longer has a single corporate parent that owns 100% of the business the way Lionsgate did after its 2016 acquisition.

In practice, Starz is controlled by a mix of institutional investors and funds that together hold large blocks of shares rather than by a single studio or tech platform.

Major shareholders and control

The largest stakes in Starz are held by hedge funds and asset managers, each owning under 20%, which means control is spread across several players. Key disclosed holders as of late 2025 include:

• MHR Fund Management LLC – roughly 17.1% of outstanding shares
• MHR Institutional Partners III LP – about 10.6%
• Liberty 77 Capital L.P. (and related Liberty 77 funds) – around 10.8% plus additional positions via affiliated vehicles
• Capital Research Global Investors – about 8.9%
• BlackRock, Inc. – about 6.6%
• Shapiro Capital Management – just under 5%
• The Vanguard Group – about 4.2%
• NewEdge Wealth – about 3.7%
• Liberty Global Ltd. – around 2.8%, a legacy stake from the separation from Lionsgate in 2025

All percentages above are approximate and based on institutional filings through mid‑ to late‑2025, so exact figures may shift as funds trade in and out.

Simple example

If you imagine Starz as a company where 100 shares exist, no one investor holds a controlling 51 shares. Instead, several big funds each hold a chunk, like 17, 11, 9, or 7 shares, and many smaller investors hold the rest, so influence is shared and often coordinated through board representation and voting alliances.

How we got here (Lionsgate connection)

Historically, Starz became part of Lionsgate when Lionsgate bought Starz Inc. for about 4.4 billion dollars in 2016, making it a Lionsgate subsidiary. In 2024, Lionsgate reorganized, creating a separate Lionsgate Studios entity and later moving toward untangling its Starz holdings as part of a broader restructuring.

By 2025, that process resulted in Starz standing on its own, with Lionsgate and Liberty‑linked entities retaining only minority positions rather than full ownership. That is why current discussions on media forums talk about whether Starz can “make it on its own” in a crowded streaming market.

Quick FAQ

• Is Starz owned by Lionsgate today?
  No. Lionsgate used to own Starz outright but now holds only a residual minority stake through related entities; Starz operates as an independent company with multiple major shareholders.

• Is there one ‘parent company’ over Starz now?
  No single parent; Starz is effectively its own parent company, with ownership split among institutional investors like MHR, Liberty 77, BlackRock, Vanguard, and others.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.