Last year, WarnerMedia and Discovery announced its merger, which has still not completed but is expected to very soon. The merger was announced to combine HBO MAX and Discovery+, and now we’re learning that it’ll be a single app and service. That’s about what we expected, but given the number of streaming services that AT&T (WarnerMedia’s parent company) has already, it wasn’t really confirmed.
Discovery’s CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels is speaking at the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference and announced this decision. It’s the first real look at what the combined service might look like. Wiedenfels gave us a pretty loose roadmap for the streaming app, once the merger closes. The two apps will be available as a bundle before they merge, and then it’ll eventually become a single app.
No word on pricing yet
The combined service does not yet have a price. But both of them have an ad-free and an ad-supported tier. Discovery+ is $4.99 and $9.99 respectively, while HBO MAX is $9.99 and $14.99 respectively. Combining those together would be $15 for ads and $25 for no ads. Which is quite pricey, and would make it more than Netflix, even after its recent price hike.
It’s likely that the combined service will remain around $15-$20 per month. Remember, Discovery+ does have a lot of very popular reality TV shows, so for that price, you’re getting a lot more content than with just HBO MAX.
Merging these two services together is not a surprise, and likely won’t be the last that we see. In the past few years, a lot of streaming services have emerged. So now, we are likely to see some consolidation, starting with HBO MAX and Discovery+. Why? Because a service charging $5 per month can’t really keep paying millions for new original content (or even licensing content) unless it has a huge user-base. And attempting to get people to pay for more than Netflix and/or Hulu, is already pretty tough.