Warner Bros. confirmed in March that Discovery+ would be merged with HBO Max to create a single service. During Thursday’s second quarter earnings call, Discovery leadership provided an update about its enhanced streaming future.
The streaming service will start to be offered in the United States during summer 2023. Latin America will follow in fall 2023. WBD plans on launching the new streaming service in Europe in the early 2024. This will be followed by the Asia-Pacific model mid-2024 and new markets in the Fall 2024. WBD plans to achieve a streaming profit in the U.S. and 130 million global subscribers by 2024.
“Warner Bros. Discovery’s unmatched depth and breadth of content provides us the opportunity to offer something for everyone,” JB Perrette, CEO and president of global streaming and interactive, said on WBD’s Q2 earnings call. “Providing consumers with a range of entertainment options will maximize our reach and financial returns.”
Executives teased they would have more to share on the upcoming merged service closer to its launch, but revealed that it will utilize Discovery+’s technology backbone while aiming to incorporate many of HBO Max’s well received user features. The hope is to cut down on each individual service’s shortcomings, such as Max’s performance and customer issues and Discovery+’s limited consumer features. Cherrypicking the attributes of both streamer’s and looking to improve on their weaknesses will ideally enable better content discovery and more personalized choices.
“All this coupled with the unparalleled breadth of quality content will help drive our leading objective which is growing engagement,” Perrette said. “This will, in turn, enable us to meaningfully reduce churn, support gross ads and increase monetization, particularly with our ad-light offering.”
Earlier this summer, select HBO Max subscribers began receiving offers to add Discovery+’s ad-lite tier for an extra $0.99 per month for four months or the ad-free tier for $3.99 monthly for the same period. The bundling — a popular tactic with Disney (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+) and Paramount Global (Paramount+, Showtime Anytime, BET+) — was the first step into eventually merging both streaming services.
It remains to be seen whether the combined Discovery+/HBO Max offerings will be enough to appeal to a wide enough audience that is interested in both content collections. WBD CEO David Zaslav wants to simplify the company’s digital ecosystem with one global direct-to-consumer product offering. But how many viewers of Discovery’s “Naked and Afraid” are also interested in the deadly political machinations in HBO’s “Game of Thrones?” Is there an overlap between those who watch HGTV’s “Love It or List It” and HBO Max’s “Peacemaker?”
Thursday morning saw the company announce that some unscripted Magnolia Network content will be available for streaming on HBO Max from Sept. 30 to September 30, while CNN movies and shows will begin streaming on Discovery+ in August. While the content of both networks may be complementary in terms of genre, it is unclear how Warner Bros. will respond. Discovery can blend both libraries into a single brand identity consumers can easily recognize.
