How Much Did HBO Lose When Moving Subscriptions to Max?
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It's been a month since HBO Max joined forces with discovery+ and rebranded as Max. The rebranding wasn't a simple name change for the app, as what most expected. Instead, Max was released as a new app and HBO Max left the US.
If you're thinking "but what about all those paying subscribers?!?!?" that's exactly what I've bene looking forward to finding out! Now that we have enough days of data we can compare Max's revenue to HBO Max's revenue before the switch.
My guess was that it'd drop as some would see this as an opportunity to cancel their subscription.
Let's compare:
Let's start with context. According to our App Intelligence, HBO Max saw $56.2M of net revenue from the App Store in the US in the 30 days prior to Max's launch and its removal from the App Store. That includes one day of overlap where both apps were available.
During the first 30 days of Max's life on the App Store, Max brought in $49.6M in net revenue, according to our estimates. And this period also includes that one day where both apps were available.
I see two interesting things here. The first is simple - Revenue stayed pretty much the same throughout this. So while some likely saw this as an opportunity to cancel, most didn't. A 12% drop in revenue is probably making some higher ups at Warner Bros Discovery, but considering they chose a new app over a rename, this could have been worse.
The other might not be as obvious. A big part of this rebrand was to join discovery+ into HBO Max to attract more downloads and more paying subscribers. A month in, the trend isn't as up-and-to-the-right as I had expected.
Content is still king so more content = more better, but it looks like it won't lead to overnight success but rather a long slog.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
