Bekræftet: HBO Max og Discovery+ bliver lagt sammen

HBO Max og Discovery+ bliver lagt sammen til én fælles streamingtjeneste. Det bekræfter man nu for første gang.

Nok har vi og andre skrevet skrevet om det nye fælles Warner Bros / Discovery selskab i lang tid, mens man har fået myndighedernes godkendelser med videre. Det er dog først nu, at man officielt melder ud, at tjenesterne skal sammenlægges.

Hvordan det skal ske rent praktisk, skal man dog først lige finde ud af og planlægge, også for at sikre at brugeroplevelsen bliver god og overskuelig.

I første omgang kigger man på en rabat ved køb af begge tjenester. Men Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels udtalte mandag, at man klart går efter at skabe én stærk samlet tjeneste.

One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle… We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition.

 “The question is, in order to get to that point and do it in a way that’s actually a great user experience for our subscribers, that’s going to take some time. Again, that’s nothing that’s going to happen in weeks — hopefully not in years, but in several months — and we will start working on an interim solution in the meantime. So right out of the gate, we’re working on getting the bundling approach ready, maybe a single sign-on, maybe ingesting content into the other product, etc., so that we can start to get some benefits early on. But the main thrust is going to be harmonizing the technology platform. Building one very, very strong combined direct-to-consumer product and platform, that’s going to take a while.

Between the two direct-to-consumer products, by the time we close, close to 100 million people are going to be affected as we make those changes. So that will need some very, very detailed and disciplined planning”.

CFO’en fremhæver desuden at det, set fra deres synvinkel, giver god mening at sammenlægge de to tjenester.

“The combination could not make more sense than what we’re doing here. We have HBO Max, with a more premium, male-skewing positioning, and then you’ve got the the female-positioning on the Discovery side. You’ve got the daily engagement that people enjoy with Discovery content versus sort of the event-driven nature of the HBO Max content. Take that together, I have no doubt that we will be creating one of the most complete, sort of four quadrant, old-young-male-female products out there. And I’m really excited about it. I can’t wait to see the first combined direct-to-consumer metrics because, in theory, the acquisition power of HBO Max, combined with the retention power of the Discovery content I think is going to make for a blowout DTC product, and that should certainly drive very healthy revenue growth for years to come.”

Der er endnu ikke nogen information om hvad den nye fælles Discovery / HBO tjeneste kommer til at koste, men der skulle komme en reklamefri variant og lidt billigere udgave med reklameindhold.

Prismæssigt så koster HBO Max 79,- / måned i normalpris, men en del kunder tog imod halv pris åbningstilbud så mange betaler kun 39,50 / måned.

Discovery+ har tre pakker. De ligger i varianter på 79 kroner, 99 kroner og 129 kroner om måneden alt efter indhold.