Over the past few years, Warner has been increasingly using vertical integration for their titles across the globe. Show Tracker reveals where Warner’s first season series have been distributed in their first window in major markets.
In the 2019/20 season, only 35% of series were vertically integrated during their first season and first window and in the 2022-2023, we can see that their vertical integration has increased to more than half (52%) of their distribution. Most of this growth has naturally occurred alongside the international expansion of Warner’s D2C service, Max (or HBO Max as it is still known in many international markets). However further expansion to new markets has been put on hold in favour of Warner signing lucrative volume deals with local players.
In the markets where there is no vertical integration for Warner the studio typically instead engages in volume deals for its HBO series, meaning that a lack of Max does not necessarily mean that third-party services are able to approach Warner for its most award-winning titles. Many of these services in receipt of volume deals have often gone so far as to brand themselves as ‘the home of HBO’.
Since the launch of Max however this has become a little more complicated as in some markets Max titles have different homes than HBO ones. For example in India, HBO Originals are currently licensed to JioCinema (owned by Viacom 18), following the end of Warner’s previous deal with Disney+ Hotstar (a deal the pre-dated Disney’s takeover of Star India). Meanwhile Max Originals are premiering instead on Amazon Prime, a significant boost to Amazon’s content presence in the market.
There are also a couple of markets where there is no volume deal in place for Max titles. For example in UK and Italy HBO titles have long been promised to Sky while there no deal is in place for Max titles. With this, the opportunity is finally open for local services to acquires series on an individual basis. In the UK Max Originals have been acquired by broadcasters like the BBC (‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’, ‘Our Flag Means Death’) and ITV (‘Love & Death’) alongside the traditional HBO home of Sky (‘Julia’, ‘The Staircase’, ‘Peacemaker’) and even studio SVODs like Paramount+ (‘Minx’). In Italy meanwhile less Max series in general have sold since 2022, with the biggest series to date coming to Italy being ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ (Amazon Prime), ‘The Staircase’ (Sky Atlantic) and ‘Peacemaker’ (TIMVision).
Like many studios with D2C services, Warner has been re-evaluating its previous priorities in vertical integration, renewing volume deals with the likes of U-Next in Japan and finding new buyers in other markets where it once would have launched Max instead. In markets like the UK and Italy with no volume deals, as of yet, tied to Max Originals, there remains a slim window of opportunity for local services to enhance their content lineup with HBO calibre series.
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