HBO Max raises its prices by 7% in the United States: these do not bode well for Spain and Europe

After two years on the air, it’s time for HBO Max to raise its prices, at least in the United States. From Thursday, January 12, the monthly subscription goes from $14.99 to $15.99, a dollar that represents almost a 7% rise. In the official announcement of the increase, Warner has stated that this rise “will allow us to continue investing in even more culturally relevant programming, and in improving the experience of all users.”

The rise is added to a plan with ads that has been active for less than ten dollars since June 2021, and that unlike the most recent experiments on other platforms with this type of ad-supported format, has not made it out of its country. originally. Therefore, it is still early to predict whether this increase will end up reaching Spain, where we pay 8.99 euros per month (or 69.99 euros per year) for the subscription.

This change comes in a difficult moment for Warner, after a year in which many series have been withdrawn from the platform and we have seen high-profile cancellations such as ‘Westworld’. Among other shows that have disappeared are the Joss Whedon series ‘The Nevers‘, the romantic anthology ‘Love Life‘, the story of an erotic publication for women in the seventies ‘Minx‘ and the family comedy set in the Latino Miami of the eighties ‘Gordita Chronicles’.

Although the era of cancellations and changes at Warner Bros. Discovery seems to have ended with the arrival of the new year, it is clear that the company is experimenting with new avenues of business. And we are not just talking about the price increase: the rapprochement that the company is having with Prime Video, and which is leading to collaborations of a very different type, makes it clear that, far from competing with Netflix and Disney+ by way of brute force, the platform looks for alternatives.

Image: HBO