Signage Paramount+ and HBO Max.
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Paramount+ and HBO Max will be consolidated into a single streaming service if regulators approve it Paramount Skydance acquisition of Discovery of Warner Bros., said Paramount CEO David Ellison during a conference call Monday.
A combined service would have about 200 million subscribers given existing totals, Ellison said during his company’s investor call about the WBD transaction. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery announced last week that they had reached an agreement to sell WBD at $31 per share after Netflix withdrew from the protracted bidding war.
Paramount executives provided no details Monday about how the company might price a combined service or what it would be called. Still, Ellison said he wouldn’t disrupt the HBO brand.
“HBO should stay HBO,” he said, citing its long history of quality programming.
HBO will likely be a sub-brand within a broader service, according to a person familiar with Paramount’s plans. HBO is currently led by Casey Bloys, whose contract expires in 2027, another person said. Bloys declined to comment.
Paramount also touted the strength of its sports offering on a combined service, bringing together TNT Sports and CBS Sports.
Paramount executives said they haven’t heard anything from regulators that the breadth of their sports offerings — which would include March Madness, NFL, MLB, NHL, Nascar, French Open, The Masters, college football and more — would trigger antitrust concerns.
HBO’s Streaming Journey
HBO has been housed in a variety of streaming services with different names in recent years.
Time Warner initially launched HBO as a streaming option in 2010, called HBO Go. Five years later, HBO also launched HBO Now, giving users a way to access HBO outside of the cable package for the first time.
After AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2018, renaming it WarnerMedia, executives launched HBO Max in 2020 in an effort to add clout and more subscribers.
Three years later, after AT&T spun off WarnerMedia and merged it with Discovery, Warner Bros. CEO Discovery’s David Zaslav renamed the service Max to showcase the addition of Discovery’s programming to the service.
That decision was reversed last year, when Zaslav and Bloys decided to return to the HBO Max name to emphasize the strength of HBO’s programming.