As British households feel the squeeze of rising household bills the scene looks set for the streaming companies to make their long-anticipated move to break the UK’s pay-TV market.
Tightening consumer spending inevitably means a tightening of purse strings, or, indeed cord-cutting.
Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus have all grown very meaningfully into the market share, and, crucially the no-contract month-to-month subscriptions are priced significantly lower than customers are charged for their ‘bundled’ pay-tv via Sky, BT or Virgin Media (NASDAQ:VMED).
The assault from streamers is set to ramp up too. Yesterday, HBO Max said it will launch its HBO Max platform in Europe and sports streamer DAZN continues to loiter on the fringes of the marketplace and a rumoured deal for BT Sports too.
WarnerMedia owned HBO Max is to be the first in the new wave of US media streaming giants to directly access European audiences. Whilst HBO has HBO Max, NBC Universal earlier this year launched the Peacock streaming service in the United States
HBO provides Sky TV with the bulk of its programming under the Sky Atlantic channels including the likes of Game of Thrones, Succession, Westworld, The Sopanos and a likely 2022 hit video game crossover ‘The Last of Us’. The same content also features prominently in the company’s Now TV product too.
“HBO Max represents the arrival of a new service that will take this to another level, offering an enhanced viewing experience and a much broader content line-up of the best entertainment for all the family at a very attractive price point,” said Christina Sulebakk, HBO Max EMEA general manager.
HBO content is a cornerstone of Sky’s entertainment offering though in Tuesday’s statement HBO acknowledged that it was not yet making a move into either the United Kingdom or Germany, where it presently has lucrative content rights deals.
HBO Max Europe will first be launched later this month in Scandinavia, Spain and Andorra before opening in fourteen other European countries including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The platform will include a 45-day cinema-to-streaming release schedule for Warner movie titles, including those under the DC Comics, along with the new Matrix movies.
HBO Max launched in the US in late 2020 and hosted the exclusive online-only release of Wonder Woman 1984.