Discovery+ has become the UK’s fastest-growing paid streaming service, with the nearly £1 billion deal its parent company spent to wrest Olympic rights from the BBC appearing to be paying off.
Six years ago, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), which runs the Discovery+ streaming service in the UK and the Max streaming service across Europe as well as broadcast channels such as Eurosport, signed a €1.3bn (£1.1bn) pan-European deal with the International Olympic Committee that meant for the first time viewers had to pay for TV and streaming subscriptions to watch every Olympic event.
Under UK regulations on “listed” or protected events, the Olympics must still receive significant live coverage by free-to-air broadcasters.
In 2021, viewers of the Tokyo Olympics expressed dissatisfaction with the sublicensing agreement signed between the BBC and Discovery, which cut the BBC’s previous full-scale television coverage and 24 live streams. For the Paris 2024 Games, the BBC plans to broadcast just 250 hours of live television and only a maximum of two live events at a time.
But fans have adapted to new viewing environments this year, with Discovery+ outperforming all competing services in subscriber growth in the second quarter ahead of the start of Paris 2024.
The streaming service is a “standout performer” in the UK, against rivals such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV+, according to research firm Kantar’s latest Entertainment on Demand report.
“We’re in great form,” said Andrew Gheorghiu, WBD’s head of European sports operations.
“We’ve just renewed our partnership with the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games, which shows how successful the first cycle has been – it’s gone from strength to strength. We’re pleased with our investment in the Olympics and our ongoing partnership with the BBC.”
WBD will provide 350 hours of live television coverage of the Paris Games across Europe, for a total of 3,800 hours of broadcast time – 300 hours more than Tokyo. Broadcast time will be provided via two Eurosport channels and seven pop-up TV stations, plus over 55 streaming feeds covering every sport.
The viewer-friendly time slots at the Paris Olympics proved to be a major advantage.
According to WBD, by the end of the second day, the number of streaming viewers for Paris 2024 surpassed the total number of viewers for Tokyo 2020.
The desire to access complete coverage led Discovery+ and Max to attract more paid streaming customers in the first four days of the Paris Games than the entire Olympics in Japan, though WBD did not disclose new subscriber numbers.
By the fifth day of the Olympics, European viewership had topped 100 million across television and streaming, according to WBD – nearly a third more than Tokyo’s viewership for the same period.
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Georgiou said the Olympic television coverage was drawing roughly double the number of viewers in Tokyo, and viewing hours via the discovery+ app were four times the levels recorded for the Olympics in Japan.
However, Discovery+ has traditionally had high churn rates, as it lacks the content depth of services like Netflix, with customers opting to end their subscriptions after they’ve finished watching must-see TV.
“The service had a strong first quarter and is the fastest growing paid video-on-demand service in terms of subscriber growth,” said Andrew Skerat, global insights director at Kantar. “Discovery+’s high churn rates will pose a challenge going forward, especially for households that gravitate towards specific content.”
Georgiou said the UK has performed extremely well in terms of new subscriber acquisition and engagement levels, which bodes well for long-term retention.
He added that he expects churn to fall further when Max’s full streaming service launches in the UK in 2026, giving subscribers access to a much larger range of TV shows and movies.
“That’s the metric we’re most focused on as a business,” he said. “Sports is great for acquiring new subscribers, but retaining them is key.”
