Warner Bros. Discovery is Max-ing out on the Olympics.
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Over the first five days of the Paris Olympics, viewership and subscriber growth on WBD’s Max streaming platform in Europe has outpaced expectations, boding well for the streamer’s prospects as it expands its continental footprint.
Official figures, supplied to The Hollywood Reporter , show that, so far, more than 4 million viewing subscribers have tuned in for the Paris Olympics on Max and WBD’s Discovery+ platform in Europe. Seventy-seven percent of those were on Max. Across all platforms (streaming, linear TV and online), some 100 million people in Europe engaged with WBD Olympics content.
“We had high expectations [going into the Olympics] but this has blown away our expectations,” said J.B. Perrette, CEO and president, global streaming and games. “The early stats, on Max specifically, have been incredible. In the first four or five days, new paid streaming subscribers exceeded that for the totality of Tokyo [2020 Olympics].”
WBD has a lot riding on the Paris Olympics. This year’s games are the first since the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia into WBD and the network timed the launch of its stand-alone streaming service Max in Europe to capitalize on the attention around the event. Max launched in its first 20 European countries May 21 and in France on June 11. WBD is carrying the Olympics across 47 markets in 20 languages in Europe on its streaming platforms Max and Discovery+ , and on linear TV and online through its Eurosport channels.
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Perrette said compared to the U.S. launch of Max last year, “When we were out of cycle with some of our biggest tentpole HBO and Max series…when we just didn’t have our best stuff” the European launch has been “from a content perspective to the best possible world” with the new season of House of the Dragon and the Olympics providing a one-two punch.
Key to WBD’s long-term success with Max in Europe will be holding on to those Olympics fans post-Paris. Perrette said initial signs are positive, pointing to strong engagement by new Max subscribers, which WBD said watched more than three times the entertainment programming as a proportion of their total viewing that subscribers acquired on Discovery+. Perrette also noted that the number of new subscribers who had kept the auto-renew function on — suggesting they will keep their subscriptions after the Olympics — was “significantly better” than forecast, though he did not give specific figures.
On ad-supported traditional TV and online, WBD said ad sales for Paris 2024 were more than double those for Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 combined.
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