HBO Max and Discovery+ to Merge Into One Service
Euphoria and 90 Day Fiance will soon call the same streaming service home. When Discovery and WarnerMedia finalize their merger, the new company, Warner Bros. Discovery, plans to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ into one streaming service. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfelds, who will keep that role when Warner Bros. Discovery is born, made the announcement during the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference on Monday, reports Variety.
There was speculation that HBO Max and Discovery+ would remain separate entities, but would be marketed to consumers together as bundles, similar to Disney's Disney+ and Hulu or Paramount's Paramount+ and Showtime. However, in the first public comments on Warner Bros. Discovery's plans for its streaming services, Wiedenfelds said the new company will reject this plan. It will take some time to complete the streaming merger though, so there will be a bundle deal offered at first while the company decides how the combined service will look.
"One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle... We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition," Wiedenfelds explained. "The question is, in order to get to that point and do it in a way that's actually a great user experience for our subscribers, that's going to take some time."
WarnerMedia and Discovery are now working out how the bundling plan will work at first, including a single sign-on and possibly bringing some shared content between the two platforms, Wiedenfelds said. "But the main thrust is going to be harmonizing the technology platform. Building one very, very strong combined direct-to-consumer product and platform, that's going to take a while," he noted.
Disecovery+ is available for just $4.99 per month with ads or $6.99 per month without ads. It is home to most of Discovery's content, as well as shows from HGTV, OWN, TLC, Food Network, History, Lifetime and other Discovery channels. The service has 22 million subscribers worldwide, Discovery said at the end of 2021.
As for HBO Max and HBO, it has a combined 73.8 million global subscribers. HBO Max costs $9.99 per month with ads and $14.99 per month without. Wiedenfelds didn't say how much a combined service would cost, but he said there will be both ad-free and ad-light services. The Discovery-WarnerMedia deal is worth an estimated $43 billion and is still set to finally close during the second quarter of 2022 after Discovery shareholders voted to approve the merger last week. Sources told Variety the deal is expected to be finalized between April 11 and April 28.
"The combination could not make more sense than what we're doing here," Wiedenfels said Monday. "We have HBO Max, with a more premium, male-skewing positioning, and then you've got the female-positioning on the Discovery side. You've got the daily engagement that people enjoy with Discovery content versus sort of the event-driven nature of the HBO Max content."