Warner Bros. Discovery ‘s new streaming service will arrive with a free plan with advertising and is expected to be launched in the first months of 2023 for our region.
After days of rumors, Warner Bros. Discovery , the name of the joint venture between WarnerMedia and Discovery, has announced that HBO Max and Discovery+ will be merged into a single platform.
David Zaslav, CEO of the company. he has confirmed it in the middle of the earnings report for the second half of 2022.
The plan for the merger of HBO Max and Discovery +
Warner Bros. Discovery wants all content to be in one place so the user doesn’t have to subscribe twice. Recall that the company owns HBO, Warner Bros., Discovery, DC, CNN, WB Games, Turner Sports, Cartoon Network, HGTV, Food Network, TNT, TBS, Turner Classic Movies, Wizarding World, Adult Swim, Eurosport, Magnolia , TLC, Animal Planet, ID and much more.
The media corporation did not reveal a name for the combined platform, but it did say that it will arrive in the United States first and its second phase of expansion will be Latin America in the first months of 2023.
The current versions of HBO Max and Discovery + account for a combined 92 million subscribers, according to the quarterly earnings report. Warner Bros. Discovery expects to reach 130 million global subscribers by 2025.
Zaslav is trying to cut costs and find $3 billion in savings, a promise he made to investors after WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc. formally merged in April, creating one of the largest media companies in the US.
New ways to consume streaming
To convince new users, the joint smackdown platform will be implementing a free subscription that will earn revenue through advertising. The premium version will have better image quality and will not have any ads.
The change in streaming strategy was announced two days after news broke that WarnerMedia decided to shelve “Batgirl” and “Scoob!: Holiday Haunt,” movies that were produced exclusively for HBO Max and approved by the regime. former corporate. It is hoped that in this way production costs can be recovered.
The merger is the latest of several major media consolidation moves in recent years. Amazon sealed its $8.45 billion purchase of MGM, Disney spent $71.3 billion to acquire most of 21st Century Fox a few years ago, while Microsoft agreed to a $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard , which is expected to close in June 2023.