A series of speculations began to circulate in the last hours through the specialized media in the United States, which warned of a resounding change in the streaming industry: HBO Max the young signal launched at the beginning of 2020, will cease to exist as it is currently known.

A surprise commercial operation would be the consequence of this abrupt change: the acquisition of WarnerMedia -owner of HBO Max- by Discovery+ from AT&T. The journalist Tony Maglio of the site IndieWireanticipated the situation by revealing the cuts that were going to take place in HBO, and everything is due to the desire to reduce costs as they merge HBO Max y Discovery+.

HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined into a single service starting in 2023Warner Bros. Discovery announced during its first quarterly earnings call as a combined company on Thursday.

“We think the product will be excellent. It’s about healing, it’s about quality, it’s about how good. The center spoke that this is the quality of HBO Max”, said the CEO David Zaslav on the June quarter earnings call.

The plan to combine the two services had long been under review as a key part of the deal to combine the former WarnerMedia and Discovery+, which was finalized in April. The executives also revealed that they are working on a plan to launch another new streaming service that is completely free.

When will the new HBO Max arrive in Argentina

The combined service will make its stellar debut in the US, to later land in Latin America and European markets that currently have HBO Max between the end of 2023 and early 2024. The next step will be to reach more than 70 countries by 2025.

This revamped streaming service promises to maintain its current ad-free scheme, similar to HBO Max’s current plans, and to further differentiate itself from its rival Netflix.

Although Zaslav called HBO one of the “Crown jewels” of his company, said they have not yet decided whether the combined service will bear the HBO name. According to internal data, users adopted HBO Max as quality content, which is a factor that his team will consider when making the final decision.

The service will apparently combine the best aspects of Warner Bros. Discovery to put the company in a more competitive position, executives said. HBO Max has compelling content that helps with subscriber acquisition, while Discovery+ would serve as a tool to mitigate churn, as is the case with the broad offering of streaming services.

At the end of the previous quarter, WarnerMedia’s HBO and HBO Max, still owned by AT&T. they had 76.8 million subscribers combined. Discovery, Inc.’s portfolio was $24 million; most of them were Discovery+.