With the WarnerMedia Discovery merger set to close soon, Discovery has confirmed that HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined onto one platform.
Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels shared the news during the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference on Monday, finally giving streamers an update on the post-merger plans for the two streaming services. Wiedenfels explained that before the services are combined, the new company will create some kind of bundle deal for the two subscriptions while sorting out the best way to combine them onto one platform, “maybe a single sign-on, maybe ingesting content into the other product, etc., so that we can start to get some benefits early on,” Wiedenfels said.
“One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle… We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition,” Wiedenfels said, according to a report from Variety.
Discovery+ is currently priced at $4.99 per month with ads or $6.99 without ads. The service primarily focuses on nonfiction programming. HBO Max currently costs $9.99 per month with ads or $14.99 a month without ads. HBO’s service features HBO content, originals, movies, and more.
The $43-billion deal was supposed to close halfway through 2022 but now has been moved up to Q2 according to information shared on AT&T’s most recent earnings call. During that call, AT&T CEO John Stankey commented that the process of having the deal approved was going as expected and that the company was making “final preparations” to complete the merger.
Last month, The Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice did not challenge the merger, according to an SEC filing from Discovery, allowing the companies to move forward with the deal. Discovery shareholders gave the go-ahead last week. Discovery says that this was “one of the few remaining closing conditions for the merger.”