Warner Bros. Discovery will reportedly introduce paid sharing on Max later this year as subscribers become stricter about letting others use their accounts.
bloomberg reported this week Warner Bros. Discovery will roll out option to pay ‘additional member’ streaming fees with Max subscriptions to allow members to use their own usernames and passwords as part of future efforts to curb account sharing It’s planned.
The newspaper cited a source “familiar with the company’s plans”.
If implemented, it would look similar to what Netflix, which pioneered the crackdown on password sharing among major streaming platforms, did in 2023.
At the time, Netflix began offering an “additional member lot” to subscribers who wanted to share their account with people outside of their household for an additional fee of $7.99 per person.
According to Bloomberg, “additional members” on Max’s platform will cost less than $9.99.
Max currently charges the same amount for its ad-supported tier in the US. His two other subscription options, Ad-Free and Ultimate Ad-Free, cost $15.99 and $19.99 per month, respectively, according to the platform’s website.
The report comes after Global Streaming and Games CEO Jean Briac Perrette suggested at a Morgan Stanley conference last month that Max would take action against password sharing. Announced.
He said at the time that Max “intends to do that later this year and into 2020, and it’s a new growth opportunity for us.”
At the end of 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery’s direct-to-consumer platforms, including HBO, Max and Discovery+, had a total of 97.7 million subscribers.
He also said in March that Warner Bros. Discovery was considering curbing password sharing as a “meaningful opportunity” for the company “relative to the size of our business.”
“I’m trying not to oversell because you look at the success of Netflix, but Netflix has been in the market for 17 years. So people have been sharing passwords for 17 years. “It will be,” he said. “Including the launch of HBO Max, we’ve been in the market for four years.”
When Netflix We have started deploying Restricting account sharing increased the number of paid members and increased revenue. As of the first quarter, it had 269.6 million members worldwide.
Warner Bros. Discovery has sought to improve the profitability of its streaming division through a variety of initiatives.
The company is reportedly not the only one to take inspiration from Netflix’s password sharing restrictions. Disney has similar plans of its own for Disney+, which viewers will see coming to the streaming platform this year.
Max made his official debut last year. The platform originally brings together content from both HBO Max and Discovery+, and is available in many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in addition to the U.S., with further expansion expected in other regions this year. Masu.
