HBO Max will repress password sharing from next month

Warner Bros. Discovery says that he will start to go more aggressively after people share passwords during a recent profit call. People who insist on adding viewers outside their household will be invited to pay an additional $ 7.99 per month.

These costs have in fact been in place for some time, but the restrictions have not been strongly applied. It ends at the end of August, said WBD streaming chief JB Perrette.

The company, said Perrette, has been tested for months to determine “who is a legitimate user who may not be a legitimate user”. With that determined, he said, “We put the net in the right place, so to speak.”

Warner Bros. Discovery has threatened a repression of password sharing for over a year. The application will follow Netflix’s decision to end password sharing in 2023 and a similar action in February 2024 by Disney +, Hulu and ESPN +. Disney CEO Bob Iger said that the problem was “a real priority” in a profit call with analysts in 2023.

Password sharing has become a problem for all streaming services and could cost industry up to $ 25 billion a year, according to a Citibank report. Netflix said in 2022 that more than 100 million households use accounts paid by other people.

The repression, however, leads the subscriptions. Netflix experienced a big increase in registrations after prohibiting the sharing of user passwords. The growth of subscribers during the quarter following the action saw 5.9 million new users, almost three times what analysts had estimated.