Netflix and Warner Bros deal

[Mr+Ripley]

  Anyone else had the email from Netflix about their proposed deal with Warner Bros.? This is what it says: We’ve recently announced that Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO. This unites our leading entertainment service with Warner Bros.’ iconic stories, bringing some of the world’s most beloved franchises like Harry Potter, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Casablanca, Game of Thrones and the DC Universe together with Stranger Things, Wednesday, Squid Game, Bridgerton and KPop Demon Hunters.
What’s changing?
Nothing is changing today. Both streaming services will continue to operate separately. We have more steps to complete before the deal is closed, including regulatory and shareholder approvals. You’ll hear from us when we have more to share. In the meantime, we hope you’ll continue to enjoy watching as much as you want, whenever you want – all on your current membership plan.

  Not sure what this means for Sky & HBO/HBO Max, if anything. I have seen that cinema chains are not happy about it though.

[nolte]

I got the email too.

I felt a bit confused reading it as hbo max isn't in these territories yet.

The big questions I'd have is the one you asked, and also what happens with the announcement from Thursday that hbo max is launching at end of March here.

Third q is the future of tnt sports here, but my guess is that it'll stay going until at least the European cups rights expire

[82bit]

Many, many unknowns. One guarantee though - the Netflix subscription price will be going vertical. And the 'free' tier included with a Sky subscription will become unviable I would think. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@82bit wrote:

 And the 'free' tier included with a Sky subscription will become unviable I would think. 

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Presumably not if it makes the product much more attractive to advertisers.

[TimmyBGood]

Netflix is currently claiming otherwise but it's difficult to see how it could make sense to have both Netflix and HBO Max operating as separate apps under the same company long-term, so presumably it's fairly inevitable that Max will eventually get swallowed.

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@nolte wrote:

I got the email too.

I felt a bit confused reading it as hbo max isn't in these territories yet.

The big questions I'd have is the one you asked, and also what happens with the announcement from Thursday that hbo max is launching at end of March here.

Third q is the future of tnt sports here, but my guess is that it'll stay going until at least the European cups rights expire

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The TNT Sports question is quite interesting, as indeed the international version of TNT Sports is included in the part of WBD Netflix are purchasing. What's also interesting is that BT were apparently hoping to completely sell their share they still have in TNT Sports over to WBD which clearly isn't going to happen now.

I'd imagine long term Netflix ditch TNT Sports or perhaps they just look to offload it, but i'm not convinced there would be any potential buyers.

I do still wonder if they would want to go ahead with the HBO Max launch in March ( i think its a bit late to cancel the rollout for the European markets scheduled for January), perhaps they may think they are better off doing "short term" licensing deals of HBO content back to Netflix to cover the next 12-18 months rather than fully launching the new platform just to then have to deal with the additional costs of rollout and then closure of it.

Got to admit i thought the email Netflix sent was interesting and was quite surprising. Personally, I wondered why they would send that comms out to existing customers before the deal had actually gone through.

[Yoghurt]

if Netflix was to stop being included as part of sky basic package I'd ditch Netflix definitely 

[Super+Anthony]

With you @Yoghurt all the way

[Yoghurt]

@Super+Anthony  Good to hear