Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery announced it will start live streaming news and sports on Max soon. This comes during Warner Bros. Discovery’s 2nd quarter 2023 earnings call when they announced that Max was now capable of streaming live events. While Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t announce what would be streaming live on Max, they said they would announce more details soon about live sports and news on Max.
Now CNBC is reporting that it has learned that Warner Bros. Discovery will launch a new sports tier on Max in October 2023. This new tier will offer live simulcast games from cable TV on Mas in time for the MLB playoffs.
According to reports, the plan is to simulcast MLB, NBA, and NHL games on this new Max tier. There will also be select college sports games. CNBC did say at this time, there will be no exclusive Max games, but that could change.
The new tier will use the Bleacher Report name and will offer not only live games but also highlights and additional sports content.
No word yet on a price for this new tier. Currently, the ad-free version costs $15.99 for HD or $19.99 for Max’s new 4K plan.
No word yet on live news plans that Warner Bros. Discovery also announced would be coming. Back in June, Bloomberg reported that live news would be coming to Max internationally and in some form within the United States from CNN. For now, we will have to wait for more details to be announced at a later date.
This news comes as Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service had a tough 2nd quarter in 2023. The service lost 1.8 million subscribers in just three months. Max now has a total of 95.8 million subscribers, according to the official earnings numbers released today. This is down from the 1.1 million HBO Max, now called just Max, added in the 2nd quarter of 2023.
The good news here for Warner Bros. Discovery is its streaming services are almost profitable. Streaming losses are now just $3 million, an improvement from the $558 million lost during the same period last year. This comes after aggressive cost-cutting efforts. Warner Bros. Discovery also paid off over a billion in debt during the second quarter of 2023.
Recently Google announced that they had reached a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to offer NFL Sunday Ticket and Max from Warner Bros. Discovery at a special price. This was announced during Google’s 2nd quarter 2023 earnings call.
With NFL Sunday Ticket, NFL fans will be able to watch out-of-market NFL games. NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers will also be able to watch multiple games with YouTube TV multiview. You will also be able to watch condensed replays of each NFL game every week.
Sadly Google has not announced what the bundle price for Max and the NFL Sunday Ticket will be at this time. Currently, the package is still not for sale but should be coming soon.
If Max streams games that had in the past aired on TNT it could help Fubo by filling in all of the sports it is currently missing.