HBO Max’s first value hike raises the month-to-month charge by $1

HBO Max is the following streaming service to get a value enhance, its first one since launching in 2020. Beginning Thursday, the price of a brand new subscription to HBO Max will enhance from $14.99 to $15.99 per thirty days. Current subscribers can pay the brand new value with their subsequent billing cycle “on or after” February eleventh.

“This value enhance of 1 greenback will enable us to proceed to put money into offering much more culture-defining programming and enhancing our buyer expertise for all customers,” HBO Max wrote in a press electronic mail.

Whereas Netflix’s creeping value hikes have accrued over a number of years, in current months, many streaming providers raised costs as they attempt to show to buyers that they’ll construct viable companies.

However with HBO Max’s many current content material removals, together with Westworld and a whole lot of basic cartoons and Sesame Avenue episodes, this value enhance stings only a bit further, as you’re now paying slightly extra for lots much less content material. It seems that the ad-supported plan will maintain its $9.99 per thirty days price.

WarnerMedia merged with Discovery final April, and the mixed corporations now have a $30 billion market cap — half of the $60 billion they rated instantly after combining. At a current convention, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav famous that “it’s going to be onerous” to satisfy the corporate’s 2023 earnings forecast of $12 billion, in keeping with CNBC, and this value enhance might assist shut a few of that hole.

This spring, HBO Max and Discovery Plus are set to be merged right into a single app, which can reportedly be referred to as Max.