Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to maintain Discovery+ as a separate service after it emerged some consumers weren’t prepared to move to an enlarged platform including HBO Max.
Quoting people familiar with the matter, Wall Street Journal said the move was a strategy shift for a company that had planned to consolidate content in a single subscription app.
It had been announced that WBD would combine both Discovery+ and HBO Max into a supersized service featuring content from both platforms and in the European market, Eurosport.
There is concern that forcing customers into taking out an HBO subscription might put a serious dent into the platform’s 20 million subscriber base. Some Discovery content, such as Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, would appear on both platforms.
Discovery+ without ads costs US subscribers $6.99 a month and the ad-supported version costs $4.99. HBO Max, meanwhile, costs $15.99 a month without ads and $9.99 with ads. In the UK, Discovery+ has recently been bundled into Sky’s direct-to-home subscription and that of BT Sport, where WBD has established a joint venture.
Combining HBO Max with Discovery+ had been a major plank of the merged Warner Bros and Discovery offer with management arguing there were too man streaming services in the marketplace.
