Warner Bros Discovery aims for global market with Europe launch of Max

Warner Bros Discovery is to launch its Max streaming service across Europe, bringing together popular TV shows such as The White Lotus with movies like Barbie to challenge market leaders Netflix and Disney. 

The Max streaming platform, which will merge content from Discovery Plus and HBO Max, is seen by executives at the US media giant as crucial to driving and diversifying profits globally. 

The company was left with large debts from the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery — standing at roughly $44bn — and it needs growth in streaming to offset the long-term decline in its traditional broadcast TV business in the US. 

The company makes about four-fifths of its sales in the US, where the market is highly competitive. WBD executives see the move as a chance to expand into new markets for consumers who either do not yet have a streaming service or who are willing to pay more for a rival service.

WBD’s Max will be available across the Nordics, Iberia and central and eastern Europe in May. The service will then launch in Poland, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. WBD is unable to launch a streaming service in the UK until the end of a deal to distribute its content with Sky in 2025.

HBO Max and Discovery Plus are currently available in some of those countries but not always the same ones, and not at all in some cases such as France and Belgium.

Max launched in the US in May 2023 in an attempt to challenge Netflix, Disney and Amazon in the streaming market, and in Latin America and the Caribbean earlier this year.

JB Perrette, chief executive and president of global streaming and games at Warner Bros Discovery, pointed to several new shows this year as well as all live action from the Olympic Games in Paris as a means to drive subscriptions at launch. 

Subscriptions to the service in the US have stabilised after an initial drop mostly caused by the overlap between customers of Discovery Plus and HBO Max and the streaming service made an annual profit, according to its last set of results. 

Perrette said that the group was “way ahead of what we thought we’d do” in driving profits from its streaming platform. WBD will also start to crack down on password sharing among its existing users.

“We didn’t think that we’d be profitable this fast,” he told the Financial Times. “We’re at the beginning part of the journey. We have a variety of building blocks of where that growth is now going to come from — the most important is globalisation.”

Perrette did not rule out involvement in future consolidation in the US media sector, pointing to the decision to bring together its sports content with rivals ESPN and Fox into a single bundle as a step towards such “structural” changes. WBD was linked with talks over a deal to merge with Paramount earlier this year. 

“Medium to long term, there are three or four big global streaming players. I believe that WBD is an anchor tenant,” he said.

Max will have more than double the amount of content available on HBO Max. The second series of House of the Dragon will be shown on Max in Europe in June. Other new series include The Penguin, based on the Batman villain, Dune: Prophecy and a spin off from Stephen King’s It. 

Live linear networks will also be available on Max in some countries including CNN International in France and Poland, TVN in Poland, TVNorge in Norway, Kanal 5 in Sweden and Eurosport.