The number of global HBO, Max and Discovery+ subscribers has dropped again, following confirmation that Warner Bros. Discovery ended the third quarter of 2023 with 95.1 million subscribers.
Overall, Warner Bros. Discovery lost 700,000 subscribers when compared to the 95.8 million reported at the end of the second quarter. The problem, however, is the company’s Q2 was already down on the first quarter of the year.
Considering the total number of HBO, Max and Discovery+ subscribers dropped by 1.8 million during the second quarter of 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery has lost around 2.5 million global subscribers since the start of April.
In fact, the drop down to 95.1 million brings the number of global subscribers for all three subscription services close to the 94.9 million reported at the end of the third quarter of last year. What’s more, the situation is even worse when just looking at the domestic (U.S. and Canada) market, as international subscribers actually grew during the third quarter.
While the three subscription services ended Q2 2023 with 54 million domestic subscribers, Q3 2023 ended with 52.6 million, resulting in a quarterly drop of 1.4 million. When also factoring in the 1.3 million domestic subscribers lost during the second quarter, Warner Bros. Discovery has lost 2.7 million domestic subscribers since April 1st.
Considering the company closed the third quarter of last year with 53.5 million domestic subscribers, domestic HBO, Max and Discovery+ subscribers have decreased by roughly 900,00 subscribers over the past year.
Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t provide subscriber numbers for individual subscription services.
It is worth noting that DirecTV made the decision to remove the ‘free HBO’ benefit from legacy accounts during the third quarter. It is still unclear why this happened, but the removal of what had become a free Max subscription was not well received by DirecTV and DirecTV Stream subscribers.
