HBO Max, Paramount+ streaming services will merge after WBD deal

Paramount+ and HBO Max will be combined into one streaming service if regulators approve Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount CEO David Ellison said on a conference call Monday.

A combined service would have about 200 million subscribers given existing totals, Ellison said during his company’s investor call about the WBD transaction. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery said last week they had struck an agreement to sell WBD for $31 per share after Netflix backed out of the prolonged bidding war.

Paramount executives didn’t offer any details Monday on how the company may price a combined service or what it would be called. Still, Ellison said he wouldn’t disrupt the HBO brand.

“HBO should stay HBO,” he said, citing its long history of quality programming.

HBO is likely to be a sub-brand within the larger service, according to a person familiar with Paramount’s plans. HBO is currently run by Casey Bloys, whose contract runs out in 2027, another person said. Bloys declined to comment.

Paramount also touted the strength of its sports offering on a combined service, bringing together TNT Sports with CBS Sports.

Paramount executives said they haven’t heard anything from regulators to signal that the breadth of their sports offerings — which would include March Madness, NFL, MLB, NHL, Nascar, French Open, The Masters, college football and more — would trigger any antitrust concerns.

HBO has been housed in a variety of streaming services with different names in recent years.

Time Warner originally launched HBO as a streaming option in 2010, called HBO Go. Five years later, HBO also launched HBO Now, giving users a way to access HBO outside of the cable bundle for the first time.

After AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2018, renaming it WarnerMedia, executives launched HBO Max in 2020 in an attempt to add heft and more subscribers.

Three years later, after AT&T divested WarnerMedia and merged it with Discovery, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav renamed the service Max to showcase the addition of Discovery’s programming to the service.

That decision was reversed last year, when Zaslav and Bloys decided to revert back to the HBO Max name to highlight the strength of HBO’s programming.