Despite Warner Bros. Discovery‘s recent institution of a password-sharing crackdown at HBO Max, the streamer is actually going to let you off the hook on that one for now.
“We haven’t been pushing on the password sharing and the economics yet,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology conference Wednesday. “People are really starting to love HBO Max. That’s the key. We want them to fall in love with our content, with our series, with the differentiated offering outside the U.S. and then over time, it’s a little tricky, with the password sharing, we’re going to begin to push on that. I think our ability to raise price as people become more and more in love with the quality that we have and the series that we have and the offering that we have will have a real ability because I think the pricing across the board — not only is there too many players, in order to stay alive, a lot of the players have just decided to drop prices aggressively.”
He continued: “Consumers in America would pay twice as much 10 years ago for content. People were spending, on average, $55 for content 10 years ago, and the quality of the content, the amount of content that we’re getting, the spend is 10 or 12 fold and they’re paying dramatically less. I think we want a good deal for consumers, but I think over time, there’s real opportunity, particularly for us, in that quality area, to raise price.”
Warner Bros. Discovery is in the process of largely unwinding the Discovery-WarnerMedia deal, with Zaslav set to become president and CEO of the separate studios and streaming company (to be called just Warner Bros.) upon completion of the company’s split expected to occur by mid-2026. On Wednesday, Zaslav noted April as the target month for closing. WBD’s current CFO, Gunnar Wiedenfels, is to become chief executive of Discovery Global, which will house the conglomerate’s TV networks and Discovery+.
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