Cable has gone live as our monthly bills continue to rise.
In the latest war for your wallet, Warner Bros. plans to… Discovery (WBD) for another price increase on its Max streaming service. This comes a year after the ad-free tier was raised to $15.99 per month in early 2023.
Report from Bloomberg It highlights all the ways WBD is trying to save money and achieve certain financial goals in the next few years. And one of them is unfortunately high prices.
May 9 update: Warner Bros. announced Discovery and Disney announced that a new streaming bundle from Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max is coming this summer.
WBD CEO David Zaslav has already undertaken a host of cost cuts and layoffs to deal with more than $50 billion in debt, but is now looking to expand or find new sources of revenue for the company. One of WBD’s financial goals is to reach $1 billion in revenue from streaming apps Max and Discovery+.
According to Bloomberg, WBD has decided to raise prices to reach the $1 billion target. Currently, the Max streaming service costs $9.99 per month for the plan with ads, $15.99 for the ad-free plan with the ability to stream on two devices simultaneously, and $19.99 for the Ultimate plan, which includes 4K streaming and supports 4. devices simultaneously. . However, the new pricing plan has not been announced as of this writing.
In a statement, Warner Bros. told Bloomberg:
“The company is focused on long-term growth of the overall business, including Max, which has been a priority across WBD to expand original content offerings for our live audiences including original news from CNN, March Madness and NBA Finals from sports, local language content from the international level, And a new distribution agreement with A24.”
It’s not clear how many subscribers WBD currently has, however A variety have been reported In August of 2023, the streaming service lost nearly 2 million subscribers between April and June of last year. This was the same quarter in which WBD renamed HBO Max to just Max and relaunched on May 23.
Warner Bros. Q1 earnings call Thursday morning (May 9). Any changes to Max prices are likely to be announced on Friday. The Bloomberg article said analysts expect the company’s sales to decline 4% due to shrinking cable TV advertising and subscriber revenues.
It should be noted that, today, Miscellaneous published A comparison of media CEO pay packages for 2023. Zaslav’s compensation was $49.7 million last year, nearly 27% higher than the previous year. That’s enough for more than 3.1 million Max subscriptions. for now.
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