For a few more days, HBO Max content – including historic shows such as The Sopranos, Game of Thrones and Succession and ongoing hits such as The White Lotus, The Pitt and House of the Dragon – will be available through Sky’s Neon service.
The White Lotus’ first season starred Sydney Sweeney and Brittany O’Grady. Photo / HBO Max
After that, they will be available only on HBO Max’s new platform, which will be competing head-on in the pay-TV space with the likes of Neon, Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Hayu – and with TVNZ+ and ThreeNow in the broader streaming battleground.
So just how successful will HBO Max be as a standalone product in a streaming market that’s awash with options?
HBO Max parent company Warner Bros Discovery says it has done extensive research.
“If you asked New Zealanders directly, ‘Do you need another streaming service in your life?’, the answer is probably ‘No, but we would like a better one’,” Warner Bros Discovery Apac managing director Michael Brooks told Media Insider.
“That’s what we’ve brought to the table and tried to do in Australia as well. We joke that we have this last mover advantage here, but we’ve certainly learned a lot by watching other platforms over the years – seeing the successes they’ve had, or the missteps, and learning from that.”
HBO enters the market with a special cut-price rate that’s available until July 16 – $10.99 per month for the first six months, or $109.99 for the first year. After that, pricing sits at $15.99 per month (standard), $20.99 per month (premium), or $159.99/$209.99 per year.
HBO is offering an ad-free experience at this stage, but don’t be surprised if it moves to an ad-tier model before too long.
A selection of HBO Max titles.
Those prices compare with $14.99 per month for Neon (with ads) or $23.99 per month/$239.99 per year with no ads.
The eventual $20.99 HBO Max premium price is not only cheaper than Neon’s equivalent tier but includes 4K (like all the global streamers) and Dolby Atmos.
Meanwhile, Netflix starts at $17.99 per month (it will add a cheaper ad-free option next year) and Disney+ offers a $9.99 monthly deal (with ads) or a standard plan starting at $18.99 per month and premium plans of up to $25.99 per month.
Amazon Prime is $10.99 per month with ads and $12.99 ad-free. Apple TV is $17.99 per month.
Brooks is fully aware of the pressure on people’s wallets.
“You come into a market like New Zealand where there’s plenty of competition, and you realise that consumers are getting far more savvy with how they spend their money,” he says.
“We’re also going through a cost-of-living crisis at the moment, so people are looking for value. They’re managing their subscriptions – how they manage their subscriptions is very much front-of-mind.
“It’s up to us as a service to make sure that we’re putting the best product out there.”
He said New Zealand, on average, had two to two and a half subscriptions per household. “We need to be one of those subscriptions – that’s based on delivering a consistent premium slate, which is something that we really focus on.”
He said New Zealand and Australia were important markets for streaming companies, with a high average revenue per user (ARPU) number.
The third season of House of the Dragon starts six days after the New Zealand launch, and HBO Max is also talking up the new Harry Potter series due to start later in the year.
New seasons of The White Lotus and The Pitt are also on the cards next year.
“We’re incredibly excited,” says Brooks of next week’s entry into New Zealand.
“HBO has had a huge fan base in New Zealand for many years. New Zealand is a really important market for us.”
READ TODAY’S FULL MEDIA INSIDER COLUMN HERE
HBO Max’s Australian experience
HBO Max has been available as a standalone service in Australia since March last year, after years of its content being licensed through Foxtel’s streaming platform.
Despite Foxtel losing HBO Max content from its own menu, it and Warner Bros Discovery struck a commercial deal that means HBO Max, as a standalone and separate platform, is still available to Foxtel subscribers – for no extra charge.
Warner Bros Discovery Apac managing director Michael Brooks.
Brooks said he had been hoping for a similar deal in New Zealand.
“We indicated many months ago that we were always planning to go direct to consumer – that was a clear conversation that we had with Sky.
“In Australia, we had a similar situation with Foxtel, whereby we had a long-standing partnership. The content was licensed there for many years, and we managed to work with them to create a wholesale hard bundle where essentially their customers would be able to get uninterrupted access to HBO content.
“We were certainly happy to have the same conversation and create a similar deal with Sky, but they made the decision to go in a different direction.”
A Sky spokeswoman said yesterday: “Our decision not to pursue a co-exclusive arrangement for HBO Max content was grounded in data and our insights into what our customers watch and value.
“We’ve chosen to invest in a diverse range of content that we know our customers love, through a broad range of studio partnerships, including Paramount, BBC, Studiocanal and Sony to name a few.”
According to Sky TV’s latest annual report, Neon subscription numbers sat at 259,409 in 2025 – up slightly on its 2024 numbers but down on the 318,000 subscribers in 2023.
The Sky spokeswoman said the company would share updated details on Neon’s performance at its full-year results. “There are no changes to our pricing tiers.”
Media Insider was tipped off last October that Sky and HBO were parting ways and that it was an unhappy divorce, especially on the Sky side.
Sky, for months, refused to confirm or comment on that scenario – there’s no doubt that losing the HBO content is a blow.
Brooks is still diplomatic. “We’ve got an excellent relationship with Sky, we always have had, that’s not going to change based on this, but they made their decision based on their own business needs, I guess.”
Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy in The House of the Dragon.
In Australia, HBO Max exceeded all expectations in its first year, achieving positive ebitda earnings. Brooks called that a “remarkable” achievement.
“We weren’t focused on at the start, I can tell you. Obviously, we want to be a profitable business – it’s not just about subscriber numbers; profitability is a huge focus for us as a global streaming business.
“But we looked at that ability to be in an ebitda positive place in year one and thought, okay, that’s a great goal for us to tackle.
“Now, I’m not saying that we’re going to achieve the same thing in New Zealand – there are a lot of metrics that come together and there’s a lot of unknowns when you go into this, but we certainly feel confident based off that.
“We’re significantly up on our original forecasts in Australia, and we’re hoping that we can replicate the same thing to some extent in New Zealand.”
Brooks won’t say what sort of subscriber numbers Warner Bros Discovery is expecting in the first year in New Zealand, but said having HBO Max as a standalone product was key to its success.
“… to see what happens when you actually take the product outside of a wall or an area that it’s been in for so long, that was the slightly unexpected surprise for us … just what happens when it becomes highly accessible at a really good price point.
“That was the explosion that we saw in Australia.”
Brooks is looking forward to seeing the data from having a direct HBO Max service.
That will also play a role in determining whether HBO Max moves into local productions at some stage (in addition to parent company Warner Bros Discovery’s blockbuster New Zealand-set films such as Minecraft and Lord of the Rings).
“You’ve got to remember our content has been with somebody else for a long time, we don’t necessarily see all the data of performance, so we need to see that for ourselves.”
While Warner Bros Discovery has not partnered up with Sky, HBO Max’s content will be available through Amazon Prime, which is increasingly becoming a platform hosting its own original content, as well as a shop window for its rivals’ shows and movies. Amazon, for example, also showcases Apple TV shows on its home screen.
Brooks will be in New Zealand next week for HBO Max’s launch and launch party – the event at the Viaduct Events Centre is just a few blocks away from Sky TV’s HQ.
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.