Countries where the current HBO Max streaming service is already available will be the first to receive Max when the Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) begins its European rollout in Spring 2024.
In a keynote presentation to Mipcom in Cannes, Gerhard Zeiler, president of Warner Bros. Discovery International, said more than 20 countries across the Continent would be offered Max that would have a line-up greater than the existing HBO Max service. This will include entertainment from discovery+ and coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
A “second wave” of deployments is planned for later in the year and is likely to include Belgium and France, where WBD already has an output deal with Amazon that will need to be resolved. Launches in the UK and Germany are expected to follow later thanks to a similar output deal with Sky.
“The content breadth is so huge, and we are enabling customers to find this content,” added Hooper Rosa, Head of Streaming EMEA, Warner Bros. Discovery. “And then they are increasing their time watching this breadth of genre, so streaming provides another avenue that complements our distribution.”
As previously reported in Broadband TV News, in the Benelux, Max will retain the HBO Max moniker, because of a separate service called Max already in the market.
