By Alexander Gladstone, Jodi Xu Klein and Alicia McElhaney
Dish DBS, the satellite pay-TV provider under Charlie Ergen's EchoStar broadcast empire, is preparing to file for bankruptcy as soon as Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter.
EchoStar, which also owns Dish TV and Boost Mobile, has been struggling with $25 billion in debt and years of subscriber losses. The Englewood, Colo., company plans to implement a restructuring agreement it announced earlier in the year with major bondholders of Dish DBS, a satellite TV unit of Dish Network, in chapter 11.
The chapter 11 filing represents Ergen's gamble to clean up a massive balance sheet after a failed merger with DirecTV and months of litigation with creditors. Restructuring Dish DBS with key bondholder backing could help cut loose its declining satellite liabilities while closing multibillion-dollar spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX.
Law firm White & Case and FTI Consulting are advising Dish DBS on the restructuring, the people familiar said. Representatives for EchoStar and Dish Network didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
The move to file for bankruptcy comes after EchoStar's March announcement of a restructuring agreement backed by holders of more than 82% of the nearly $10 billion of Dish DBS debt.
The restructuring support agreement includes a set of transactions that will reduce debt, resolve pending bondholder litigation and increase flexibility for the company to engage in potential M&A deals, according to an EchoStar securities filing.
Last May, the Federal Communications Commission notified the company it was reviewing its compliance with certain federal obligations to provide 5G service in the U.S. The regulator has raised questions about EchoStar's build-out extension and mobile-satellite service utilization in the 2 GHz band.
To resolve the FCC's concerns about the underutilization of its spectrum network, EchoStar struck deals to sell spectrum licenses to AT&T and SpaceX. AT&T agreed to pay $22.65 billion in cash and SpaceX agreed to a $17 billion deal, with the proceeds expected to be used to pay down some of EchoStar's outstanding debt, according to the company's latest quarterly earnings. Neither deal has closed.
EchoStar skipped its interest payments on several bonds due on June 1, saying it wasn't making these payments as it awaited the receipt of net closing proceeds from the AT&T transaction. In mid-June, the company said that the DBS unit would make the belated interest payments.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that EchoStar was considering a potential chapter 11 filing last year, aiming to shield its wireless spectrum licenses from federal regulators.
In its most recent quarter, EchoStar reported $2.26 billion in revenue from its pay-TV subscribers, a decline of more than $260 million year-over-year, the company's latest earnings report shows. It said that it lost approximately 177,000 net subscribers in the first three months of 2026.
EchoStar earlier attempted to merge with DirecTV to create the world's largest pay-TV distributor. The deal failed after holders of more than $10 billion of Dish Network and Dish DBS bonds refused to participate in a debt exchange, claiming that it would have transferred billions of dollars in assets to other Ergen-controlled entities.
Write to Alexander Gladstone at alexander.gladstone@wsj.com, Jodi Xu Klein at jodi.klein@wsj.com and Alicia McElhaney at alicia.mcelhaney@wsj.com