Last September, Warner Bros. Discovery announced a Bleacher Report (B/R) Sports Add-On to their Max streaming service. The initial plan was that the service would start free for Max subscribers, then flip to being an extra cost on Feb. 29.
In January, though, Deadline reported that the tier would be free for “a few more months” as WBD finalized “some tech integrations.”
The tier still hasn’t changed to an extra cost, but it now looks like that’s close to happening.
The most recent discussion comes from a Bloomberg Screentime newsletter, edited by Lucas Shaw. On Tuesday, an accompanying article from Bloomberg’s Christopher Palmeri and Hannah Miller rekindled talk of the paid sports add-on tier (which WBD has always noted on that add-on page, citing it as “A $9.99 value, on us for a limited time”). The Bloomberg article suggested it might be implemented as soon as later this month.
WBD declined to comment on this around an AA request on Wednesday.
Here’s more from that piece:
Later this month, Warner Bros. Discovery is hoping to start charging customers of its Max streaming service an extra $10 a month if they want to watch sports like the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball.
It’s a long-delayed effort by the media giant to figure out a streaming strategy for its collection of sports rights. Sports are currently free, and it’s possible the rollout of the paid plan will remain on hold. Negotiating for the rights with all of its partners has been a challenge.
As the decline of the company’s cable networks accelerates, CEO David Zaslav needs to transition his sports business to streaming (along with the rest of his entertainment programming). Warner Bros.’ cable networks generate billions of dollars a year from events like March Madness, the NBA and the MLB playoffs. While the company is about to lose the NBA, barring judicial intervention, it has since added other sports, like French Open tennis.
As noted, this is far from an official release or comment. Even that Bloomberg piece comes with the disclaimer that reads “it’s possible the rollout of the paid plan will remain on hold,” so this should not be read as a full announcement yet. But that timeframe certainly would make sense
As with carriage disputes, streaming services are usually launched around top sports moments where they have rights, and WBD’s TNT Sports has MLB playoffs, NBA regular-season games, and NHL regular-season games in October, in addition to their ongoing college football content.
The other interesting thing to consider here is the current judge-imposed stall on Venu Sports. That joint streaming venture between ESPN, Fox, and WBD for sports content only was supposed to be up and running by now, and that would have given people without multichannel video provider packages (cable, satellite, or virtual MVPD) access to TNT Sports content on TBS, TNT, and truTV. But that’s not out yet.
Of course, that content is largely available right now on Max for free. But a move to a paid tier there would have made Venu an even more appealing option for many (not that it needed the help). The Venu holdup perhaps makes a paid-tier move for this sports content even more desirable for WBD, as that could bring in some of the subscription revenue they were counting on from the joint venture.
Still, WBD has a delicate balance to walk between boosting their Max subscriber numbers at the current prices ($10 a month with ads, $17 without, $21 for four devices at once rather than two) and trying to gain more revenue from their current subscribers by making the sports content a paid add-on. They also seem to have some challenges on the rights front, as noted in that Bloomberg piece as it’s worth mentioning that streaming rights are often handled very differently from linear rights.
