Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max Details 2024 European Rollout Plans

Warner Bros. Discovery will launch its Max streaming service across 22 European countries starting in the spring.

Gerhard Zeiler, president of international at Warner Bros. Discovery, and Leah Hooper Rosa, WBD head of streaming for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), made the announcement on Monday from international television market MIPCOM, where Zeiler was giving the opening keynote address.

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Rosa said the initial European rollout will be across WBD’s continental footprint, including the Nordic and Iberian regions, as well as the Netherlands and Central and Eastern Europe. The second wave, she said, would include France and Belgium later in 2024. Still missing are the U.K., German and Italian markets, where HBO has lucrative existing output deals with European pay giant Sky.

Max’s European offering will also include live-streamed sports content via WBD’s Eurosport channel, including coverage of the tennis Grand Slam tournaments, cycling’s Tour de France and the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Max will also offer live simulcasts of several of WBD’s local entertainment networks in some countries.

The new Max, which combines HBO and Discovery+ content, launched in the U.S. in May. A rollout in Latin America is set for the first quarter of 2024. Following the first European rollout, WBD plans additional launches in key Asia Pacific territories.

Zeiler said in the first half of this year Max was “getting slightly profitable,” saying that the studio-backed streamer was the only SVOD platform alongside Netflix that could make that claim. “The others are still losing a lot of money,” he noted but added he thought “more rational attitudes” were entering the streaming business.

Concluded Zeiler: “What we see at least in the last, let’s say 12 months, is that the era of streaming we saw with an over-delivery of content underpriced at this low level [is over].”

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