Amazon could succeed long-time HBO partner Sky and distribute Max in the UK, Germany and Italy, says WBD exec

With a big question looming over HBO distribution in the U.K., Germany and Italy as Warner Bros. rolls out Discovery Max worldwide, WBD’s JB Perrette has brought a potential new partner to the territories: Amazon.

Longtime HBO distribution partner Sky could definitely stay in business with WBD, Perrette said during an appearance at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit, repeating international boss Gerhard Zeiler’s comments from last spring. And yet, says the CEO of streaming and games, “there are great alternatives too. Amazon is great in these markets and is definitely looking to be more and more aggressive in this area.”

Sky’s contracts to carry HBO content on its systems expire in key markets in around a year. WBD has announced that it will launch Max there by 2026. Like all programmer-distribution relationships, the relationship between WBD and Sky has come under increasing scrutiny in the streaming era as the company’s customer acquisition and retention dynamics differ from those in linear television.

The UK-Germany-Italy dilemma has existed since the launch of HBO Max in 2020, when the service was operated by WarnerMedia, a subsidiary of AT&T. Since HBO’s early days in the 1970s, the channel has evolved into a representative of the pay-TV package, distributed wholesale by its owners and marketed to consumers by distributors such as Sky in Europe. Technology now allows streaming services to bypass these traditional routes to customers, but in recent years companies like WBD have struggled with the high costs of acquiring and maintaining subscribers on their own.

By launching Max in dozens of global territories, Perrette said the company has “a lot of evidence” of how the company has managed “to manage both a (direct-to-consumer) presence and a (sales) partner presence.” .” …The same could apply to Sky.” The satellite operator has a “large installed base” of subscribers, Perrette added, “and our content is critically important to them.”

Ultimately, Perrette said, “time will tell” what strategic path the parties take as discussions continue. “In the old model,” noted Perrette, “you had to get all your content from Sky and just go direct to consumer.”…. That’s not necessarily the case, especially if they have a large, established customer base with many of our fans. There are very collaborative ways we can work together and we’ve proven we can do that.”