Warner Bros. CFO Discovery has revealed its vision for streaming services, with Max leading the way. He would like to increase prices and offer less content, while pushing towards annual subscriptions to limit cancellations.
It wasn’t that long ago. Just a few months. While some were waiting for the arrival of the streaming platform HBO Max in France, its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it would kill the service to launch Max. The idea behind the decision is to offer more general public content like TV shows, reality TV or documentaries. And no matter how successful the HBO series are: Band of Brothers, The Sopranos, Games of ThronesThe Last of Us…
Launched last May in the United States, Max is not yet available in France. To do this, we will have to wait until 2024. In the meantime, we learn more about the path that the service, and more generally Warner, should take in terms of streaming. For Gunnar Wiedenfels, CFO: “For 10 years, in streaming, an extremely valuable amount of quality content has been distributed well below its fair market value, and I think that is being corrected” .
Warner would like to increase the price of streaming by offering less content
He adds that Warner now has a more “cash”-centered mentality and that having offered exclusive content on HBO was an incomprehensible decision. Gunnar Wiedenfels wants to maximize profits by analyzing which series to keep and which ones are better to sell to other platforms. Subscription prices are also expected to increase according to him. A way to reduce regular cancellations each month and push towards the annual formula by offering a discount.
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If we had to summarize this vision of streaming, it would therefore amount to asking users to pay more for less content (sold to other platforms). Termination would also be more difficult if you opted for a more advantageous year-round offer. We can understand the purely financial interest of such a strategy, but it is a safe bet that it will not be to everyone’s taste.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter