The OTT platforms Discovery Plus and HBO Max are set to be combined into one service, owing to the merger of their parent companies, Discovery Inc and AT&T’s WarnerMedia.
The new platform is likely to combine the subscriber base of both Discovery Plus and HBO Max, which is estimated to stand at around 100 million users. It will provide both ad-free and ad-lite products, said Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, who will also serve as CFO of the newly-formed company, Warner Bros Discovery.
During the Deutsche Bank’s 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference, on Monday, Wiedenfels said, “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.”
While AT&T owns WarnerMedia, which is the parent company of HBO, Cartoon Network, and CNN, Discovery Inc’s offerings include Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Science Channel, and TLC.
“We have HBO Max, with a more premium, male-skewing positioning, and then you’ve got the 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. Take that together, I have no doubt that we will be creating one of the most complete, sort of four quadrant, old-young-male-female products out there,” the CFO added.
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While Wiedenfels did not disclose the proposed pricing of the new platform during the conference, he added that since the combined platform will take some time to premiere, the new company will resort to a bundling approach as a temporary solution. The plan is to bring together the platforms under one subscription model. This would be similar to the way telecom providers in India provide bundle subscriptions of popular streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Disney+ Hotstar.
The merger deal between the two companies, which was first announced in May 2021, is expected to be closed by the end of April 2022.