HBO May Be Considering Discounted Plans for HBO Now

When HBO announced HBO Now back in March, it was ballyhooed as the network’s strike back against the ever growing numbers of viewers pirating HBO’s current flagship show, Game of Thrones. But over the course of the last six weeks, it has become obvious that whatever effect HBO Now might be having, it is unfortunately unable to stop the ever growing piracy problem. It may be that HBO can do nothing, considering that at this point, the problem has scaled to heights unimaginable only a couple of years ago.

But, if this post from CutCableToday is to be believed, HBO seems to be looking at ways to make HBO Now more attractive. The exclusive deal with Apple TV will end not long after this season of Game of Thrones, and before the network spreads the cord cut version of their channel to more providers, they seem to be looking at ways to make the deal irresistible.

A writer at CCT was one of those who signed up for the free trial month of HBO Now. When his month was up,  he decided not to renew when the trial period was over, instead going with the SlingTV version of the channel. What he discovered upon taking a survey asking what it would take to get him to come back is interesting.

As we can see, HBO is asking about prepaid subscriptions that last for a period of months (much like MLB.tv) instead of about once-a-month payments (like Netflix), or about having a second free month whenever you’d like, which is the model the WWE Network uses. As the article notes, that $99.99 a year price, when you do the math breakdown, is a pretty substantial discount from the current $14.99 a month price. $14.99 a month equals $179.88 a year, or if you want to break it down the other way, $99.99 a year is only $8.33 a month, which is on par with what most pay for Netflix streaming.

The other question of note:

The writer finds this question a bit confusing, but I don’t. One of the notable things about restricting HBO Now to AppleTV users was how few people actually use AppleTV. The deal felt almost like HBO was doing Apple a favor, instead of the other way round—especially when you note that AppleTV has been routinely beaten in sales by Roku for the last few years, and was even beaten by Chromecast in 2014. With HBO Now coming to the end of the restriction period, this questions seems like an attempt for HBO to find out what users are really using when they stream their TV shows, instead of just assuming that “everyone has an iPhone, so therefore everyone must want an AppleTV, if we only gave them the reason to buy one.”

Not that we know that’s what HBO was thinking when they struck the exclusivity contract with Apple, but it certainly seemed like an odd choice considering the numbers suggested it was far from the best way to reach the largest amount of consumers. I still maintain that the reason HBO went this route was to keep the initial sign up numbers manageable, in order to keep HBO Now from crashing, like many streaming services do in those debut weeks. After all, the network couldn’t have foreseen the piracy numbers skyrocketing quite the way they did when it signed the deal.

It will be interesting to see in the coming months where HBO Now goes next.

• Published on 05/22/2015 at 11:30 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT