WBD Makes Max Free for Millions in New Deal
Movieguide® Contributor
WBD (Warner Bros. Discovery) just locked in a deal with Charter that will allow millions of Charter’s subscribers to get Max for free.
“That’s a surprise for two reasons,” Business Insider said. “For starters, Charter and WBD’s existing deal isn’t set to expire for a year. More important: Since WBD looks likely to lose its rights to carry the NBA, observers expected WBD to have a difficult time getting pay-TV operators to carry its channels — or at least see them play real hardball when it came to price, since WBD was losing valuable programming.”
“But this early deal has a wrinkle,” Business Insider reported. “To make it happen, WBD had to make a significant concession: It will let Charter provide the ad-supported version of its Max streaming service — the thing most people used to call HBO — for free to most of Charter’s subscribers.”
Charter will pay WBD for the right to let users use Max with ads, as well as Discovery+. Charter made a similar deal with Disney last year. Charter distributed Disney’s traditional cable networks in exchange for Disney letting Charter give away an ad-supported form of Disney+.
Variety reported, “Under the multiyear pact, the ad-supported version of Max — including all HBO and Max content — as well as Discovery+ will be bundled with all Spectrum TV Select packages for no additional fee.”
Rich Greenfield is a LightShed analyst who believes the Charter deal is a win for WBD.
“Nobody had faith in Zaslav/WBD to get a Charter deal done, especially a deal that was not even up for an entire year,” he said.
Movieguide® recently reported on WBD’s struggles:
Warner Bros. Discovery has lost the rights to the NBA, which “has reupped its agreements with Disney’s ESPN as well as Amazon’s Prime Video and inked a brand new deal with NBCUniversal,” according to Deadline.
Warner Bros Discovery filed a lawsuit, stating that the NBA rejected them unjustly. The company faced a $9.1 billion impairment charge following the loss of the NBA. In addition to the loss, the company also took a “$11.2 billion hit in write-downs and charges last quarter.”
Yahoo reported, “Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) stock price fell as much as 12% in early trading on Thursday after the company reported disappointing second quarter earnings on Wednesday that missed expectations on both the top and bottom lines.”
The company’s prospect certainly looks a lot better after the deal. WBD’s shares jumped 10% after the arrangement.
“The timing of the deal is fascinating,” Business Insider noted. It comes as WBD and Comcast, another of the country’s biggest pay-TV distributors, are talking about a deal to replace one that expires at the end of the year. Meanwhile, DirecTV and Disney are battling in a standoff that has taken Disney’s channels away from DirecTV’s 11 million subscribers.”
