HBO Max pins its hopes on Friends and Harry Potter to win the streaming war in the UK | Television industry

The launch of HBO Max into an increasingly crowded UK TV market last week has pushed deals for consumers as former rivals team up amid a slowdown in subscriber growth.

Streaming service Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is hoping that the competitive price of streaming subscriptions and the deals the service bundles through Sky make it a must-have, not a run-down too, in the British TV ecosystem that Netflix upended 14 years ago.

In a media landscape where fresh and exclusive content is essential to winning and retaining customers, WBD relies on an extensive library of hits and highly publicized new shows to secure a regular place on screens.

The service will feature Warner Bros. films, including the entire DC superhero series, Harry Potter, Sinners, and One Battle After Another, as well as shows from HBO, home of The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, The Wire, and Succession.

It also offers an extensive archive of TV favorites including Friends, which is no longer available in the UK since Netflix dropped at Christmas, and The Big Bang Theory.

There’s also a lot riding on the Harry Potter TV series – which has been brought forward for release from next year until this Christmas – and titles such as The Pitt, the medical drama starring ER’s Noah Wyle, which caused a storm in the US last year but debuts in the UK on the new service.

“The main starting point for HBO Max here will be the launch of Harry Potter,” says Matt Trickett, head of media at data and research firm Ampere Analysis. “It’s their first huge piece of intellectual property in addition to movies.

“They have invested a lot of money in the series and it is completely exclusive outside of their Sky deal.”

After years of teaming up with Sky with a series of TV and film deals, making the pay-TV company the “home of HBO” and eliminating the ability to launch its own streaming service, WBD finally struck a deal in 2024 to unwind its relationship.

However, Sky retains certain rights including the ability to stream any new series of shows that aired on its service before the end of last year, such as White Lotus, Euphoria, Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. This makes new content like Harry Potter and The Pitt even more valuable.

“We’re at Day Zero,” says JB Perrett, global head of WBD’s streaming and gaming business. “What we haven’t been able to do yet is get people to come directly to us and get exactly what they want.”

With HBO Max’s cheapest package at £4.99 per month with ads, it beats rivals Netflix, Disney and Paramount+ by £1. For those willing to pay an extra £1 a month, all new Hollywood releases will be available, rather than having to pay an additional fee to watch each film.

However, WBD has also struck a deal to bundle HBO Max into a bundle via Sky – which also includes Netflix, Disney+ and NBC Universal’s reality TV-focused Hayu – for £24 a month.

“It costs £1 more per month than subscribing to each streaming service separately, but consumers also get the standard Sky TV service,” says Janika Juntsson, research director at Ampere. “The challenge for HBO Max is how many people will watch its content, it’s a different dynamic for those who subscribe to the service directly.”

The strategy of signing partnership deals with former rivals is a relatively recent shift by streamers as growth from more profitable direct subscriptions dries up.

In 2020, the pandemic helped boost subscribers to the UK’s biggest streaming companies by 37% year-on-year, but by 2022 that had fallen to a high of 20% and last year it was just 7%. Without the boost provided by the arrival of HBO Max, growth would have been less than 5% this year.

It took Netflix until 2018, six years after its UK launch, to stop working with Sky and become the first to broadcast a major package that combines its content. And Disney+ struck its first-ever bundling deal, again with Sky, just this month.

“[The idea] “It’s totally fine for subscribers to come directly, it’s not a religion that we profess,” Perrett says. “As long as the economics make sense, we’ll accept getting to consumers as quickly as possible…to get to scale as quickly as possible.”

WBD has another temptation for UK subscribers, as it moves all of its sports content to HBO Max, including live broadcast rights to the Olympic Games until at least 2032 and TNT Sports, the joint venture with BT that hosts events including Premier League and Champions League matches.

It is also urging fans to sign up directly through the HBO Max app, offering deals that combine sports and entertainment, which it says save consumers between £60 and £131 for the first year.

HBO Max is on track to reach just over 6 million subscribers by the end of this year, making it the fourth-largest paid streaming service in the UK, according to Ampere. That’s behind Netflix, which has 18.6 million subscribers, Amazon’s Prime Video on 12.65 million, and Disney+ on 8.04 million.

However, even as it seeks to take its place at the top of the UK streaming table, the service could change radically if new owners are successful.

Paramount Skydance, which beat out Netflix with a $110bn (£83bn) bid for WBD last month, said that if the deal cleared all regulatory hurdles it would merge HBO Max with Paramount+.

Whatever name a combined entity might be called, this would mean adding big movie franchises including Mission Impossible, Top Gun, Transformers and Star Trek.

While there would be the headache of restructuring again, bringing Channel 5 into the expanded business, the tie-up would save TNT from being severely weakened by Paramount’s sudden loss of the Champions League TV rights in the UK from 2027.

“I’m not going to talk about what might happen in the future,” says Perrett, who could receive $142 million in cash and stock compensation if the deal goes through.

“The benefit for us of being late here is that we’ve had time to realize who we are, what we are, and most importantly, what we’re not. A lot of other streamers would do more volume.” [of programming] What we will do. But it’s not just about chasing size. “We are trying to be more organized and strive for quality.”

How UK streaming companies compare in terms of price and reach

Netflix: Standard (with ads) £5.99 per month. Standard (no ads) £12.99 per month. The number of subscribers is expected to reach 18.59 million by the end of 2026.
Amazon Prime Video: £7.99 per month with ads, £10.98 without. As part of a full Amazon Prime subscription: £8.99 with ads, £11.98 without ads, £95 per year. Subscriber expectations: 12.65 million.
Disney+: Standard (with ads) £5.99 per month. Standard (no ads) £9.99 or £99.90 per year. Subscriber expectations: 8.04 million.
HBO Max: Basic with ads £4.99 per month (including new movies £5.99). Or £9.99 (no ads). Subscriber expectations: 6.06 million.
Paramount+: £4.99 per month (with ads). Standard (no ads) £7.99 per month. Subscriber expectations: 5.66 million.
Apple TV: £9.99 (no ads) or £89.99 per year. Subscriber expectations 2.31 p.m
Sky TV Now: From £2.99 to £27.99 per month depending on content package. Subscriber expectations: 1.81 million.
Discovery+: From £3.99 per month. Subscriber expectations: 1.06 million.
ITVX: Free with ads. Or the ads free option of £5.99 per month. The subscriber is expected to pay 980,000.

Source: Company websites and analysis