WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max is set to launch in fifteen new European markets on March 8th including the Netherlands, Poland, and Portugal. The rollout marks a substantial expansion for the service in Europe, which is currently available in the Nordics and Spain.
From March 8th HBO Max will also be available in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. The service will launch in a further six European markets, including Greece and Turkey, later this year.
WarnerMedia will lean heavily on discounts to drive quick subscriptions. Parent company AT&T used a host of promotional offers when launching in Spain and the Nordics last October, and a similar tactic will be repeated in new markets.
In Portugal and Eastern Europe, customers who sign up in March will get 33 percent off the regular price (€5.99 at launch) for life. This marks a change from Spain and Nordics, where the initial offers lasted for a limited time. The move signals that WarnerMedia is keen to drive as many new sign-ups as quickly as it can, prioritising pure subscription numbers over quick profits.
A race to win the third wave
The speed of WarnerMedia’s rollout, and the generosity of the initial discounts, are likely an effort from WarnerMedia to come out on top in the third wave of US-based streaming services launching in Europe.
Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are of course already well established in many European markets, having initially launched years ago. More recently Disney+ and Apple TV+ both debuted in Europe as part of their global launch.
But while a number of US broadcaster-owned streaming services launched around the same time as Disney+ and Apple TV+, most kept out of Europe to start with. Now, having established themselves in their home market, they’re looking to quickly find further growth in Europe. Comcast’s Peacock, ViacomCBS’s Paramount+, Discovery’s Discovery+, and SkyShowtime, a collaboration between Sky and ViacomCBS, all have plans to expand throughout Europe in the coming years, while Disney executives have hinted they may launch Hulu in Europe too.
But we’re increasingly seeing signs that consumers are reaching the much-debated ‘SVOD saturation’ point, meaning there may well not be room for all of these services to properly establish themselves.
Thus, we might expect to see more aggressive discounting as services seek to build up loyal audiences, before ramping up prices further down the line.
But there are other significant hurdles for HBO Max’s growth in Europe. One is that the service is unable to launch in the UK, Germany, and Italy due to content licensing deals with Sky which run until 2025. The other is settling on its streaming strategy once WarnerMedia is separated from AT&T and merged with Discovery, assuming the deal completes.
It’s not clear whether HBO Max and Discovery+ would remain as separate offerings, or be joined into one bundle. But while they remain separate, they will have to continue to compete for subscribers as they expand across Europe.
