Following launches across Latin America earlier in the year, May 2024 saw the continued global expansion of Max, Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD’s) flagship subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) service. The streamer initially launched in 20 European markets, with a further five markets added by July 2024. With Max operating in five of Europe’s 10 largest SVoD markets as of Q2 2024, and available to almost 30% of European SVoD users, Ampere estimates that the service now has over 11m European subscribers, making it the sixth largest single SVoD platform in the region.

To entice viewers onto the platform, Max initially offered its Sports Add-On to subscribers for free, capitalising on the sports rights held by WBD across Europe to host extensive coverage of popular sporting events, most notably the Paris 2024 Olympics in July. However, with Europe’s SVoD market forecast to gain only 50m subscribers in the next five years, substantially fewer than the 200m gained over the previous five, Max will become increasingly reliant on its ability to attract and convert subscribers of rival platforms, requiring a content offering that sets it apart.

Max combines the catalogues owned by its parent studio Warner Bros. Discovery, with HBO-produced House of the Dragon the most popular SVoD title globally in July 2024, following the release of season 2 in June. In total, Max offered its subscribers in Europe 24 of the 100 most popular titles globally in July 2024. All 24 titles are Scripted, and almost two thirds (15) are produced in-house, demonstrating the strong appeal of WBD’s content. 

Indeed, a key motivator for signing up to Max is the platform’s offering of critically-acclaimed Scripted titles (those with a Critical Rating* score above 70), with Max offering the highest proportion of such titles (26%) amongst leading SVoD platforms in July 2024. However its comparatively small library of such content may require Max to increase its offering of Scripted titles before the platform’s anticipated launch in Germany, the UK, and Italy (the 1st, 2nd, and 5th largest SVoD markets in Europe in Q2 2024) in 2025, following the expiry of Sky’s licensing deals for HBO content in these markets.

In addition, over 60% of distinct movie and TV season titles available on Max in Europe in July 2024 were Unscripted, significantly deviating from the offering of Europe’s other leading SVoD platforms. Documentary and Reality titles were particularly strongly represented on the platform, accounting for over 40% of distinct titles available that month, with the streamer offering over 70% more of these titles than Netflix despite hosting a total content library just over half the size of its rival’s.

While Max’s large Documentary and Reality libraries provide a notable point of difference, only 8% of European SVoD subscribers named either genre as their favourite in Ampere’s biannual Media - Consumer survey in Q1 2024, suggesting there may not be enough appetite for this content for it to be an effective driver of subscriber acquisition. Given this, as well as boosting its Scripted catalogue, Max may also look to offer additional Unscripted content ancillary to its Sports content (such as Sports Documentaries) to help engage audiences in Europe at a relatively small cost, maintaining subscriber engagement and mitigating churn.

*The Critical Rating is a proprietary score from 0 to 100 that is created based on user reviewers collected from online critical rating websites.