Warner Bros. Discovery lost 1.8 million subscribers in the three months following the launch of Max. The losses weren’t exclusive to the Max streaming service, though. In its earnings report on Thursday, the company reported having 95.8 million global subscribers across all of its services — down from 97.6 million at the end of the first quarter of this year.
Did anyone unsubscribe just because the name changed?
If you take a look at the history of HBO Max’s rebranding, there were several titles removed from the streaming service just right before the change. It’s entirely possible, that removal of said titles preempted subscriber decline, or you could attribute it to the rebranding.
I believe a lot remains unseen at this point, and the CFOs comments could be considered valid; that churn and user overlap from Discovery+ could have played a part in the decline.
Not that the article title is misleading, there was a user decline after they rebranded.
With them removing so many animated shows (among many others too) I definitely can see the reason in not resubscribing. I’m only still on because I paid for yearly, I may cancel after. HBO Max doesn’t seem to be coming out with as much content and there’s less of it that I’m interested in.
Gunn’s DC is mostly all I’m interested in now, as the HBO side of things is taking a backseat it seems. We’ll see.
A more accurate headline would have been “HBO Max rebrand to Max forced users to download new standalone app after removing content and increasing prices, users refused”.
Personally I’m going to watch Lovecraft Country, finish Last of Us, maybe check out White House Plumbers and wrap up Righteous Gemstones, then unsubscribe until a show I like has a new season. It’s too expensive now.