As Warner brings Max to more markets, the most immediate effect of its expansion is felt by buyers who once held volume deals with Warner to be their country’s ‘Home of HBO’. Show Tracker reveals how these services are responding to these pipelines of content getting shut down.
Warner still has volume deals with Sky in its markets alongside those with the likes of U-Next in Japan, but in other markets they have recently ended these deals to launch Max instead. In the Netherlands VodafoneZiggo was the home of HBO content until the launch of Max (then known as HBO Max) in 2022. Overnight all Warner content vanished from VodafoneZiggo’s service. Ahead of this Warner deal ending, a new volume deal with Paramount was signed for its Showtime content, ensuring a steady supply of premium drama would continue to be available to VodafoneZiggo subscribers.
This deal lasted until the launch of SkyShowtime in the Netherlands, with the Pay TV operator since acquiring far less content in general. Instead, VodafoneZiggo partnered with Max, SkyShowtime, as well as Disney+, to offer a series of bundled packages, combining their Pay TV service with SVOD subscriptions as a super aggregator.
Meanwhile in France OCS had long held a volume deal with Warner before Canal+ acquired them entirely. This ended with the launch of Warner Pass in 2023, an Amazon Channel offering both brand new and library Warner titles. Amazon marked this launch by making ‘The Last of Us’ available to all Prime subscribers, effectively making Amazon Prime the first window service for the critically acclaimed game adaptation.
Since then Warner Pass was closed with Max launching formally in France in 2024. OCS, despite the loss of their volume deal with Warner, have managed to keep up a comparable level of new season premieres across its services, while its parent Canal+ has enhanced its super aggregator status even further with the integration of Max into its Cinema Series bundle, combining Canal+, Apple TV+, Max, Paramount+, Netflix, Disney+ and more.
Titles acquired by OCS have grown in variety since the end of the Warner volume deal, there are titles like ‘The Winter King’ from Sony that can take the place of a ‘Game of Thrones’ or ‘House of the Dragon’, big marquee franchise titles such as ‘Tales of the Walking Dead’ and ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’, alongside a growing number of UK drama titles.
While it can undoubtedly be a hit for local services to lose their volume deals, Pay TV operators such as Canal+ and VodafoneZiggo are equipped to rise to new opportunities and establish themselves as super aggregators to encourage new subscribers and provide the same content they would otherwise have to acquire within their own ecosystem. For distributors the opportunity is clear, as services like OCS branched out to suppliers they had only engaged with in a limited capacity in the past.
All eyes will be on the negotiations between Sky and Warner for UK, Germany and Italy as its one of the deals holding the largest value for both companies. If Max were to launch in these markets instead of a renewal, distributors may wish to look to the activity from OCS and VodafoneZiggo as case studies on how to capitalise on the opportunity that such a move would open up.
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