HBO Max Australia reveals its content plans

Warner Bros Discovery might still be awaiting the arrival of new owners Paramount, but until the remaining regulatory hurdles are cleared, the GM of the Australian operation Michael Brooks has told Mumbrella it is business as usual.

After a bidding war with Netflix, Paramount is going through regulatory hurdles in the US before the WBD acquisition can close. When that happens, it is expected divisions of the company will be merged globally which will likely mean Paramount+ and HBO Max will be available on one subscription. To add to the complications ad sales for Max are currently outsourced to Paramount’s biggest free-to-air rival Nine.

So when we sit down with Michael Brooks on the anniversary of the HBO Max launch, the first question had to be about the impact of a sale to Paramount.

“I obviously can’t speculate on what the plans are,” he said. “I’m not part of those discussions. What I would say is that you’ve got two iconic studios potentially coming together and that’s pretty exciting in the marketplace.”

Paramount’s global CEO David Ellison has spoken about the desire to house the streaming offerings under the one umbrella. He has also discussed the respective platforms keeping their own identities, including HBO Max.

In the meantime, Brooks explained the company continues on its strategy to grow the HBO Max business in Australia.

“This has not just been a successful local story for ANZ or for APAC, but the launch of HBO Max and the performance of HBO Max has been a moment within the global company.

“We’ve had our CEOs mention this on earnings calls as an example of the successful rollout of the service. Our team here has done an unbelievable job to get us to the place.

“To date HBO Max here has outperformed all metrics, all forecasts, everything that we had in place.”

The most impressive metric perhaps is that it is already profitable. Although he wouldn’t share numbers, Brooks said: “It is an EBITDA positive business in year one, which is difficult to achieve.

“The subscriber numbers outperformed what we had in our original forecast.”

Those subscriber numbers were helped along with a Foxtel deal that saw subscribers get access to HBO Max included in their package.

Michael Brooks, WBD’s local general manager

Twelve months ago Brooks acknowledged the new streaming service faced plenty of competition. Something he referenced again this week.

“We knew we had some work to do coming into a cluttered market. Our marketing team and our strategy was excellent. We’ve had a brilliant run of incredible content coming through, blockbuster content.

“All of those things have led to a place where we’ve just had an incredible outcome.”

HBO Max’s Australian content spend

Helping HBO Max to profitability has been the steady flow of content from the US. It has yet to start spending on Australian content. Brooks revealed that is coming, but viewers will have to be patient.

“Local content was always going to be part of the service. To be ultimately successful, you’ve got to have an element of local content here.

“We are committed to commissioning some incredible Australian content for the Australian service. The first of those titles will likely be on the service in 2027. We are very close to commissions on at least two projects and that slate will continue to grow over the next couple of years.”

Brooks denied that the introduction of content quotes for streamers forced HBO Max’s hand to invest in Australian commissions.

“I was having conversations with our content strategy team and with our leadership team in the US to explain to them there is always a local flavor. Australians want to see their own people. They want to hear their own stories.

“We have a global service that is rolling out and you have a lot of non English speaking territories which require local language. We have to navigate the demand across all those other regions as well. Local content was always part of our strategy.”

With a studio business and a streaming platform, Warner Bros Discovery is well placed to measure the impact of quotas on the market. “There’s some thought that maybe some [streamers] will just spend a large chunk of money of their quota obligation on a single project,” he said.

“That’s not really the intent of ours at this stage, mainly because we want multiple series to be able to complement our existing slate. But I also wouldn’t say a streamer commissioning a high budget single production is a bad thing for Australia. If you want to compete on a global scale, if you want your content to truly compete, maybe that is the best thing.”

How Nine is helping HBO Max profitability

HBO Max wouldn’t identify which of its plans are attracting the strongest uptake. While Foxtel subscribers get the Basic with Ads tier, new subscribers wishing to take that entry level service will pay $11.99 monthly.

Prices then rise to $15.99 for Standard [two devices, ad-free] and $21.99 for Premium [four devices, 4K, ad-free]. Discounts apply when paying annually.

When asked about pricing plans, Brooks explained: “Price is something that we assess constantly, but we have no immediate plans for any price rises here in Australia.”

He then went on to discuss the importance of the Basic plan. “We’ve had really good uptake across all the various tiers that we have. The ad tiers have been popular and will continue to be.

“Ad sales in general is a huge focus for us because it’s incremental growth as much as we can scale that business. We had the benefit of such a strong slate of shows that allows us to offer a consistent level of content output.

“One in three households has at least one ad tier product and we’ll still be very focused on ours and our relationship with Nine who does our ad sales and is driving that growth.”

Brooks added that HBO Max is mindful of the viewer experience. “One of the benefits of our ad tier is there are limited interruptions in first run HBO content. There’s a pre-roll and there is a post-roll. There are no mid-rolls on our premium content.

“We work closely with Nine and they’ve been great partners and they continue to push our product out in the marketplace. I don’t think anyone expected the volume [of advertisers] in year one that we’ve had.”

Blockbusters driving growth, with more on the way

“We launched HBO Max in Australia with season two of The Last of Us,” Brooks reminded Mumbrella. “It was one of the highest performing series of the year for us.

“We also had a great library of content as a support act. Things like The Big Bang Theory and Friends where engagement on those titles is always huge.

“Other big tent poles for us were House of the Dragon, White Lotus, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and The Pitt has been absolutely enormous for us. The passion that we’ve seen from consumers and fans around that show has been unbelievable.

“Still to come we’re about to drop Euphoria season three and then straight into new House of the Dragon.

“Toward the end of the year we will have Harry Potter. Harry Potter will be the year’s biggest television event.”

Although the television series of the books is not due until Christmas 2026, the HBO documentary Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic, released last week, is already proving popular on the platform.

Brooks continued: “Our team has done an amazing job just from an acquisitions perspective. Heated Rivalry was not one of our shows, but actually John Beohm, who heads up our content in Australia, felt passionately about that series and wanted to buy it for the Australian service.

“Then that was shared with the US and now it’s an absolute sensation across so many parts of the HBO Max service around the world.”

The HBO library remains exclusive to the platform, explained Brooks. “The Warner Bros. library is different. There are a number of titles which are exclusive to the service but we are still licensing other content from the Warner Bros. catalog. We have a big licensing deal with Nine and also a lot of other players in the market.

“And that will continue, we’re not pulling back from that. Both businesses [streaming and content sales] are very important to the company.”