Warner Bros. Discovery lost 1.8 million subscribers in the three months following the launch of Max. The losses weren’t exclusive to the Max streaming service, though. In its earnings report on Thursday, the company reported having 95.8 million global subscribers across all of its services — down from 97.6 million at the end of the first quarter of this year.
Of all the decisions Zaslav has made, rebranding HBO Max to Max was actually the smartest one. HBO’s brand was being diluted with a bunch of non-HBO content and it was going to have a negative impact in the long term. Not sold on the new name, but removing HBO’s name from a bunch of lower quality content was actually a smart move.