AT&T also announced that the HBO platform has gained over 13 million subscribers year-over-year. In addition to that, the average revenue per subscriber was $11.24 for HBO and HBO MAX for the quarter. That’s up from $11.15 from the previous quarter, but down from $11.72 from a year ago. Part of the reason for this is going to be AT&T offering the service to its customers for free for quite some time now, and the addition of the ad-supported tier of HBO MAX which is now $9.99/month.
HBO MAX is showing itself as a clear competitor for Netflix
Prior to the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, HBO MAX has shown itself as a big competitor for Netflix. This is largely due to the large library that HBO MAX has. That’s of course thanks to Warner Bros. Studios. Now that the merger is complete, and HBO MAX will be adding in Discovery+ content in the near future, that could become an even bigger problem for Netflix. Netflix cited that it lost subscribers in the quarter due to the growing competition in the streaming space. Well what competition are they referring too? It looks like HBO MAX is at the top of that list. And Netflix is priced pretty similarly to HBO MAX now. Because of the loss of subscribers, Netflix has announced that they’ll be working to bring an ad-supported tier of Netflix in the very near future. Something that they were very much against just a month ago.