Verizon is planning to offer a discounted streaming bundle of the ad supported subscriptions of Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery Max for a combined price of $10 per month, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is a $7 per month savings compared to the price of the services if they were paid for separately.
Verizon already has a streaming aggregation service called +Play, which it introduced in March 2022. Original partners in +Play included Netflix. And in April 2022, HBO Max joined +Play.
But this new bundle of Netflix and Max is the first time Verizon has offered the ad-supported tiers of these services.
The new bundle will be offered to Verizon’s myPlan wireless customers.
Netflix launched its ad-supported tier in November 2022 for $6.99 per month. Recently, Netflix said it plans to introduce a new feature in 2024 where viewers who binge three consecutive episodes of a show will get to watch a fourth episode ad-free.
The ad-supported tier of Warner Bros. Discovery Max costs $9.99 per month.
Bango
It’s unknown what software or technology Verizon is using to create its +Play aggregation service.
In March, Bango was making a big splash at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, promoting its super-bundling platform. At the time, Bango hinted that it was working with Verizon, as well as the big cable companies Comcast and Charter, to bring some order to the chaotic streaming landscape where people subscribe to multiple streaming services with multiple credentials and have a hard time finding something they want to watch.
StreamTV Insider reached out to both Bango and Verizon today to see if the U.K. vendor was involved in this new bundling arrangement between Verizon, Netflix and Max. And we’ll update this story if they respond.
There’s been a lot of talk in the streaming industry this year about “super-bundling.” In July John Buffone, VP and industry advisor for Media Entertainment & Connected Intelligence at Circana, told StreamTV insider that the concept of bundling top content from various providers isn’t new. It’s something traditional pay TV operators have done for years with their cable TV bundles.
Similarly, a super bundle for streaming brings together multiple subscription services from various, sometimes competing, companies into one discounted offer with a single bill.
Some of the analysts StreamTV Insider has talked to this year have been predicting more bundling partnerships because they help to reduce churn, save money on marketing costs and make life easier for consumers. The analysts have also pegged telcos as good partners to deliver these bundles.
Along the same vein, Comcast and Charter recently unveiled their Xumo Stream Box.
Xumo is the companies’ joint venture to help their subscribers find video content across their linear and on-demand cable channels and also across a multitude of streaming apps.