Warner Bros. Discovery, the hulking monster born of the recent merger between Discovery Inc. and AT&T’s WarnerMedia, has unveiled an outline of its plans to merge its HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming services in the next year. Per the company’s earnings call, we can expect them to smash together into their new form in the summer of 2023.
The rollout will begin in the US in the summer, followed by Latin America later int he year, European markets that have HBO Max already in early 2024, followed by more launches later that year. It’s not yet known what they’re calling this new service, but at one point in the call we heard some significant hints that it may not include “HBO” in the title.
Though pricing for the new merged service has not yet been shared, we did learn that for now, the company is going to focus on ad-supported and ad-free versions of its new service. But down the line, it also intends to explore options in the “free, ad-supported space.”
And it also sounds like at least some users might get hit with price increases, too. Without giving numbers, we were told that the company is “shifting away” from heavily-discounted promotions, and that it’s planning price increases “particularly in certain international regions where we are well below market,” as well as periodic price increases over time.
Later on the call, when asked about a migration plan for subscribers of the cheaper Discovery+ service, we heard that WarnerMedia Discovery is planning to give some sort of transition period for lower-priced subscribers to move up, but at some point will have to ensure subscribers move to the “inevitable higher price point” in a “relatively short period” of time.
With over 92 million subscribers currently, WarnerMedia Discovery is expecting that these, along with a number of other strategic changes, will push it to 130 total subscribers worldwide by 2025, while it also works to seemingly cut costs by putting multiple projects on the chopping block and potentially laying off employees.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.