Max intends to follow both Netflix and Disney in stopping subscribers from sharing their passwords, according to a report from Variety on Thursday. The shutdown is set for sometime later this year.
J.B. Perrette, president and CEO of global streaming and games at Warner Bros. Discovery spoke about the move at the 2024 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference. He called it a “growth opportunity” for the company.
Max is sitting in fourth place in the streaming wars with approximately 97 million subscribers, which puts it behind Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+. It took a big step back last year after it dropped the “HBO” in a rebrand leading to a loss of almost two million subscribers.
Netflix pissed off a lot of its subscribers when it started cracking down on password sharing back in 2022. The move, however, ended up being a winner for Netflix, which ended up gaining millions of subscribers last year. Since then, Netflix created a new, popular ad tier and plans on doing a subscription price bump soon.
Disney has yet to begin the curbing of password sharing that it announced last month. Terms of service language has already been updated about sharing so it’s just a matter of time before the company drops the hammer.
As for when this might take place, Perrette said the crackdown would start later this year and continue in 2025. If there was a time this year to get people to pay up, then summer would be ideal considering June is when House of the Dragon season 2 is going to start. The Game of Thrones franchise has always been a big draw to subscribe to HBO, and when the show ended, it was a reason to cancel the service altogether. It also didn’t help that the last season was kind of terrible.
