On March 8, fifteen European countries will have the chance to host HBO Max, the video on demand service. Unfortunately, France is not on the list of these new countries that will be able to take advantage of HBO exclusives from this platform.
A gradual rollout of HBO Max in Europe and around the world
It was in May 2020 that AT&T, the largest American telephone service provider, announced, through its subsidiary WarnerMedia, the launch of HBO Max, their video streaming service in partnership with the American channel HBO. A year and a half later, in October 2021, HBO Max announced its arrival in Europe in six countries: Andorra, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
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At that time, Warner Media planned to gradually expand the availability of its platform to 190 regions around the world by 2026.” We are hard at work preparing for a potential launch in Asia […] it can be expected that Southeast Asia will probably be the first Asian market we will enter with HBO Max as Johannes Larcher, director of HBO Max International, said. As of December 2021, the platform had nearly 74 million subscribers.
Next March, fifteen new European countries will be able to benefit from the VOD service: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. During the year, six new European countries will be able to take advantage of the offer, including Greece and Turkey.
We’re thrilled to reveal today that on March 8, @HBOMax will launch in 15 additional European countries as part of @WarnerMedia‘s global rollout of the platform: https://t.co/2PI8w56kzR pic.twitter.com/3wIceDtV2Z
— Inside HBO Max (@InsideHBOMax) February 1, 2022
Why will we have to wait in France?
As we can see, HBO Max will certainly not arrive in France during the year 2022. Currently, it is Orange Cinéma Séries (OCS), the bouquet of television channels devoted to series and cinema owned by the operator French which owns the rights to broadcast programs related to HBO.
We have to wait for the agreement between the two entities to end so that HBO Max can arrive in France with full control of the various HBO licenses. The OCS platform should normally lose its exclusivity at the end of 2022, which suggests that the VOD service should take over for an arrival in 2023.
According to Reuters, the situation is similar (if not worse) in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom: Sky and HBO have signed agreements which will be valid for several more years. It is certain that these countries will not have HBO Max for some time…