HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined into one streaming service package, Discovery’s CFO said at a conference on Monday.
When the merger between Disocvery and WarnerMedia is complete, which is inching closer toward a reality after clearing a big shareholder approval hurdle last week, Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said at the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference that the company is making preparations to combine the two offerings rather than bundle them.
However that may require some bundling early on — and may take several months to appropriately combine the two.
“One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle,” he said (via Variety). “We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition.”
Wiedenfels also added that the $43 billion WarnerMedia and Discovery deal is still expected to close in the second quarter. After that, he said the goal is to have one “very strong combined direct-to-consumer product and platform,” adding that the “combination could not make more sense.”
“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,” Wiedenfels said. “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.”
Discovery+ subscriptions start at $4.99 per month for the ad-supported model, with a price of $6.99 per month for the ad-free tier. HBO Max also has an ad-supported tier at $9.99 per month, while the ad-free model is $14.99 per month. Discovery+ has 22 million subscribers, while HBO and HBO Max combined have 73.8 million global subscribers.
