Following the first phase of the recent WBD’s European roll out of Max, Leah Hooper Rosa, EVP of EMEA Streaming, the company’s goal is to operate across all major markets, including the UK.
She said she expects to see more conversations in the future about launching Max in the UK. WBD previously announced it plans to launch service Max in the country by 2026. The media and entertainment powerhouse currently has a long-running licensing partnership with UK pay TV operator Sky, for its HBO content which runs until the end of 2025.
Hooper Rosa, said, “We’re in the game now of we want to be a top three global streaming service. That’s our ambition.”
“We’re on a multi-year journey in terms of our Max roll out across Europe. We’re actively in conversations. Our CEO and Gerhard Zeiler (president of WBD International) have also shared with partners and working out what that would look like,” she added.
Referring to the company’s recently partnership with Disney to offer a bundle including Disney+, Hulu and Max in the US, Hooper Rosa said – “it’s natural that we see those types of things move into Europe”.
The streamer has launched across Europe in partnership with telcos and pay TV provider in select regions.
“We haven’t seen too many types of those relationships yet in Europe with other streamers doing streaming bundling. But I think there is an opportunity for that in the future and we’ll see how consumers react to that,” she added.
Max debuted in Iberia, the Nordic markets and parts of central and eastern Europe earlier this month, as part of a staggered roll-out for simplicity, said the WBD exec. Further launches are planned for France, Poland, the Netherland and Belgium June.
Currently the streamer is available in 20 countries, including Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Bosnia & Herzegovnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.
At present, WBD will only introduce tis Max’s ad-supported subscription plan in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Romania, Poland, France and Belgium.
For their strategy in Europe she explained, “its really a combination of the maturity of the ad market in those regions and the of maturity of our business because we need to be able to sell ads or to be able to have the capability to work with a partner.”
Max also offers a sports add-on, providing coverage of major international and European sports including Australian Open, Roland-Garros, The Championships, Wimbledon, US Open, Giro d’Italia, La Vuelta a España, Tour de France, and every major winter sports World Championship and World Cup events.
As part of the move, Hooper Rosa said it will be scaling back its content across its other streaming services including discovery+ where Max is present, which was the streaming home for WBD’s sports content across the company’s European markets.
“Max is our flagship streaming service,” she said. “So what we’re doing now is a wind down across Europe of our other streaming services. It’s really on a market by market basis of how we’re managing that transition.”
