Liberty spins off Starz: Who will buy it?

With Liberty Media’s announcement that it’s spinning off Starz into a separately traded public company, the speculation is on as to who might buy America’s No. 3 pay cable service.

As a standalone premium network with licensing agreements in place to run Disney and Sony theatrical films, Starz could present an attractive acquisition target for traditional media conglomerates and large digital media companies alike. Meanwhile, operating on its own might be untenable over the long term. So far, efforts including Spartacus, Boss and Magic City have not become the kind of subscriber-drawing assets on par with, say, HBO’s Game of Thrones. “Starz simply cannot fund the level of original programming it would like to compete with HBO and Showtime, not to mention the ramping original spend of new entrants like Netflix ,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst for BTIG trading.