Blog — 16 Nov, 2021
HBO Max prospects strong in Nordics as Warner goes global
Highlights
HBO Max is an improvement over HBO Nordic. An expanded library, the ability to stream Warner Bros. movies 45 days after their theatrical release and available 4K/UHD for select titles coupled with a lower price make HBO Max a superior over-the-top offering compared to its predecessor in the region.
High broadband penetration in the region makes it an over-the-top-friendly environment, but new entrants face stiff competition in the saturated market from both global and regional streaming services as well as free-to-air and pay TV.
Currently available in just six markets in Europe, HBO Max's move into the Nordics precedes an ambitious global direct-to-consumer expansion on the part of WarnerMedia. Planned launches in 2022 will expand the service's footprint to 67 markets globally — more than a third of the way to Warner's goal of 190 markets by 2026.
As part of a global direct-to-consumer expansion, Warner Media LLC has launched HBO Max in the Nordics, replacing HBO Nordic, which operated in the market for nine years. HBO Max launched in October in Andorra, the Nordics and Spain and is slated to debut in an additional 21 European markets next year, including Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia in early 2022.
Nordic competition and prospects
While HBO Nordic paved the way for its successor, HBO Max still has its work cut out for it in a region increasingly crowded with rival services. Walt Disney Co. debuted Disney+ in the Nordics in the first quarter of 2020. In January 2021, Discovery Inc. launched of Discovery+, including the premium Eurosport offer, in the U.S., the U.K. and Ireland, India, the Nordics, Italy and the Netherlands, tapping Verizon Communications Inc., Sky, Vodafone Group PLC and Telecom Italia SpA as distribution partners for the streaming service. ViacomCBS Inc. has offered Paramount+ since 2017 on an exclusive basis via a handful of Nordic operators and is now partnering with Comcast Corp. units Sky and NBCUniversal Media LLC to launch Sky Showtime in 2022 across more than 20 European markets where Sky does not offer pay TV services.
Apart from rivals on the streaming front, the OTT services in Scandinavia compete for eyeballs with a robust pay TV and free-to-air ecosystem. NENT operates the free-to-air channels TV3, TV6, TV8 and TV10 in Sweden; TV3, Viasat 4 and TV6 in Norway; and TV3, TV3+ and TV3 PULS in Denmark. In total, the group offers nine premium pay TV sports channels in Scandinavia. Private Swedish group Bonnier owns the free-to-air and thematic pay channels of commercial group TV4, as well as the Nordic suite of C More pay TV channels.
To make HBO Max competitive in a region where broadband households pay for at least 2.5 OTT services on average, WarnerMedia priced the service at about 20% to 25% lower than its previous HBO Nordic pricing, depending on the country, and offers annual subscriptions for a monthly discount of 8.3%. HBO Max is also luring subscribers with lifelong 50% monthly discounts for those that sign up by the end of November. HBO Max is currently priced below both the Standard Netflix plan and Viaplay while it costs the same as Disney+ in all markets but Finland where it is more expensive by €1/month.
Beyond pricing strategy, HBO Max is leveraging WarnerMedia's longstanding partnerships with multichannel operators to establish its foothold in the region. Most operators allow subscribers to add HBO Max to their TV bundle regardless of their existing package and get billed through a single account.