I’ll try to keep my grumbles to a minimum here, because as an HBO purist, HBO should never have been taken out of the title to begin with. Just today, at a WBD press event, they announced that Max is rebranding back to its HBO Max moniker for reasons that have always been obvious to the fanbase. Here is the press release:
May 14, 2025 – At the Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront presentation in New York today, it was announced that Max, the company’s premier streaming platform, will be rebranded HBO Max this summer.
WBD’s streaming business has incredible momentum, turning around its profitability by almost $3B in just two years and scaling globally with 22M subscribers added over the past year, with a clear path to over 150M+ by the end of 2026. This is thanks to an enormous amount of hard work, investment and re-focusing the strategy on the programming that is working best like HBO, recent box-office movies, docuseries, certain reality series, and Max and local originals, and de-prioritizing other genres that drive less engagement or acquisition.
This evolution has also been influenced by changing consumer needs, and the fact that no consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content. With other services filling the more basic needs with volume, WBD has clearly distinguished itself through its quality and distinct stories, and no brand has done that better and more consistently over 50+ years than HBO.
Returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering. It is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach – leaning heavily on consumer data and insights – to best position itself for success.
David Zaslav, President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said: “The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming. Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.”
During the WBD Upfront on stage at Madison Square Garden, JB Perrette, President and CEO of Streaming, (pictured) and Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, provided further details on the upcoming change.
Perrette: “We will continue to focus on what makes us unique – not everything for everyone in a household, but something distinct and great for adults and families. It’s really not subjective, not even controversial – our programming just hits different.”
Bloys: “With the course we are on and strong momentum we are enjoying, we believe HBO Max far better represents our current consumer proposition. And it clearly states our implicit promise to deliver content that is recognized as unique and, to steal a line we always said at HBO, worth paying for.”
I found some additional quotes to expound on the decision. Warner Bros. Discovery streaming marketing chief Shauna Spenley says, “We just cannot wait for his hot take on this whole rebrand. We think it’s going to be pretty hot. We all know the market is cluttered. It’s becoming almost like fast fashion. People are saying, ‘I’d rather have one great sweater rather than five that fall apart. The desire for cheap, long-form volumes is waning.” [Long-form programming that breaks through is] “our competitive advantage. It’s the same one we have had on HBO for the last 50 years.”
The above is from Deadline, as is the following. JB Perrette said to the industry site, “We’ve been iterating on this, both from a content and strategy standpoint for the last two years, ever since we launched, in the positioning of it, in terms of who we are and how we’re different than what others in the marketplace are doing in terms of volume, We’re more about quality and distinction. And reality is, David Z. said, look, the consumer always tells you whether you’re right or wrong. And in that context, why don’t you go back? That sounds like HBO. Let’s be bold and make the right decision for our business at a moment of great strength. David was a great champion of saying, we should go back to including HBO in the brand, because nothing stands for distinction and quality more than HBO.”
We here at HBOWatch couldn’t agree more, but what took WBD so long to realize what we knew all along? Does it look bad industry-wide to have to rebrand again? Yes, but other companies are realigning as well. We can use Versant as an example. Course correction is desperately needed, and it looks like Bloys, Perrette, and Splenley are on the right track as far as we’re concerned.
Look for the changes to begin this summer, which only starts in a little over a month from now.
