• HBO Max is once again the name of Warner Bros. Discovery's flagship streamer.
• It's one in a long line of rebrands and logo changes.
• We took a trip down memory lane and dug into all the incarnations over the years.

What's old is new again.

Max is now HBO Max — reversing a polarizing rebrand that happened two years ago. Warner Bros. Discovery announced its streaming service's new-ish name at its annual upfront presentation to advertisers.

This is the latest entrant in a series of names for HBO's streamer. Media and advertising circles are split on its merits.

The HBO Max rebrand could help restore awareness and credibility associated with HBO's storied entertainment name, said Ben Kunz, the chief strategy officer at advertiser Mediassociates. He said clients were often "puzzled" by the streamer's more generic name.

"People have limited room in their head for brand names," Kunz said. "When people get confused, they fall back on 'no.' Anchoring a streaming service with all the momentum of the past of HBO, I think that will build credibility for marketers."

The company says reverting to HBO Max signifies a return to its roots with a renewed focus on quality over quantity.

"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," WBD streaming head JB Perrette said in a statement.

But some branding experts believe that yet another name change will only create confusion.

"Everybody now knows that Max is HBO Max," said Chris Rosica, the CEO of branding firm Rosica Communications. "It's a little late in the game to do that."

Below is a brief history of HBO's many streaming rebrands:

HBO GO (2010)

HBO Go debuted in 2010 and was only for linear HBO customers who were traveling or wanted to watch HBO on the go — hence the name.

Smartphone adoption was rising, and tablets were starting to pop up after Apple unveiled the iPad in early 2010.

HBO Now (2015)

Then came HBO Now, which brought shows like "Game of Thrones" to cord-cutters for the first time.

Pay TV was just starting to decline from its peak as millennials opted for Netflix and Hulu, which offered on-demand shows and movies at a fraction of the cost of cable and satellite TV.

HBO Max (2020)

WarnerMedia, which cellphone giant AT&T ran from 2018 to 2022, launched HBO Max in 2020 during the height of the streaming wars. Its timing was excellent, as the pandemic kept the world inside, which led to a boom in streaming viewership.

However, competition was fierce. HBO Max had to contend with stalwarts like Netflix and Hulu as well as compelling new entrants like Disney+, Apple TV+, Peacock, and eventually Paramount+.

A purple color palette was a purposeful departure from HBO's simple but iconic black-and-white look. It was distinct and "ownable," brand strategist Lily Thaler of Design Bridge and Partners said.

Max (2023)

HBO's parent company had a rocky run under AT&T, which cut its losses by spinning it off in 2022. WarnerMedia then joined forces with cable company Discovery to form a new media conglomerate, which had even more exposure to the shrinking pay-TV business.

Enter Warner Bros. Discovery. David Zaslav, who'd run Discovery since 2006, was looking to make a splash and shake up Hollywood.

Armed with HBO's prestige fare and Discovery's guilty-pleasure shows — like "My 600-lb Life" and "Dr. Pimple Popper" — Zaslav dropped the HBO name from its streamer in hopes of being a something-for-everyone service like Netflix.

This move was controversial and heavily criticized by some, though others argued the Max rebrand was necessary to protect the HBO brand.

WBD marked the rebrand to Max by swapping its purple gradient for a bright blue. Patrizio "Pato" Spagnoletto, WBD's then-marketing chief, told Vulture that this change was "intending to signal not just change from HBO Max of the purple, but a much more sustainable premium version of the service."

Max had mixed results. It struggled with a high cancellation rate but found success by bundling with Disney+ and Hulu. The service grew meaningfully in the last year, largely due to international expansion.

Max (2025)

WBD foreshadowed its HBO Max rebrand in late March by refreshing its blue color scheme with HBO's signature black-and-white look.

"Typically, moving to black in a space where a lot of brands own color might try to signal sophistication, legacy, respectability," Thaler said.

This move shows confidence, she added: "We don't need to be bright and flashy and cover all colors of the rainbow to get your attention."

HBO Max (2025)

This latest rebrand is WBD's clearest signal yet that it's no longer trying to contend with Netflix and is instead prioritizing profitability.

WBD content chief Casey Bloys said putting the HBO brand front and center "far better represents our current consumer proposition," and positions its content as differentiated and valuable.

HBO's three letters stand for high-quality, prestige programming, said Dan Green, a professor and the director of entertainment industry management at Carnegie Mellon University.

"It's hard to get attention, and HBO Max — you know what you're getting," Green said.

However, branding veteran Rosica said this move wasn't necessary — and could backfire.

Rosica said Max already had high brand awareness, especially among younger audiences. Confusion could also emerge, as some consumers may wonder if reality TV shows from Discovery are going away, or if prices are changing.

"A lot of questions will come up that really can be avoided," Rosica said.

Some ad execs said they doubted the rebrand would make a difference either way.

Mike McHale of Noble People said ads on WBD's streamer are still too expensive compared to its peers, given it has an audience that he thinks is reachable elsewhere.

"People who watch 'The Sopranos' — they probably also watch 'The Office.' There isn't an exclusive audience of people I feel like I'm missing when I leave them off buys," McHale said.

No matter what WBD calls its streamer, Thaler pointed out that it won't be able to retroactively change shortcut buttons on Roku remotes. Many of them still say "HBO Max" — albeit now in the wrong color.

• The streaming wars aren't the same cutthroat competition they used to be.
• Media giants like Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery have adopted different strategies.
• Netflix has zeroed in on engagement, while others are focused on goals like subscriber growth.

These aren't your older sibling's streaming wars.

The battle for audiences has evolved in recent months, as once-fierce rivals turn to frenemies and even team up on bundles. One key reason is that Hollywood titans like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have stopped following Netflix and are instead carving out distinct strategies.

Netflix is all in on "engagement" — how much people are watching and interacting with its platform — and no longer regularly shares its subscriber count, which was once its north star. It also just revamped its homepage with vertical video as it takes cues from social media giants like YouTube and TikTok.

Disney, meanwhile, is locked in on subscriber growth. Two Disney streaming employees told Business Insider that attracting new users remains a top priority, especially if they're in its bundles.

And Warner Bros. Discovery is prioritizing profitability with Max. Its quality-over-quantity strategy hinges on preventing cancellations instead of reaching everyone or maximizing engagement.

Disney, WBD, Comcast, and Apple didn't respond to requests for comment.

Engagement is in, thanks to ads

For years, Netflix focused on subscriber growth, which Wall Street was obsessed with. But as it approached and cleared the 300 million subscriber milestone, Netflix zeroed in on another goal (besides growing revenue and profit): engagement.

A Netflix spokesman said engagement is its "best proxy for customer satisfaction" and that highly active viewers are less likely to cancel.

Netflix drove about 8% of watch time on connected TVs in the US in March, the most recent data provided by Nielsen. Though Netflix was the highest among its paid streaming rivals, it trailed YouTube, which got 12%.

That's why Netflix's co-CEO Greg Peters said on the company's first quarter earnings call that there was "plenty of room to grow" engagement.

Boosting watch time helps Netflix achieve another top goal: building out its nascent ad business. The company is playing catch-up here. It will generate $2.2 billion in US ad revenue this year, according to EMARKETER, which is well below Hulu's $2.7 billion figure and in line with Peacock. However, those two streamers have had ad businesses for years.

John Conca, a media analyst at Third Bridge, said Netflix's ad business will blossom as it builds out its own ad tech.

Amazon is also focused on its streaming ad business, which burst out of the gate in early 2024 thanks to an unconventional opt-out strategy. The e-commerce giant turned on ads for all Prime Video users who don't pay $3 a month to remove them, instantly scaling its ad business. Nearly 34 million of Amazon's 166 million US-based Prime Video users see ads, EMARKETER estimates.

Amazon has a treasure trove of shopping data, which Conca said can help boost the effectiveness of its ads.

An employee at a rival streamer who recently interviewed at Amazon told BI the company seemed aggressively focused on growing its ad business.

Subscriber growth is still in style

Not all streamers have shifted their focus to engagement. Disney still sees plenty of room for subscriber growth, as do midsize players like Paramount+ and Comcast's Peacock.

"Disney is still not focused on engagement, as Netflix is right now," one Disney streaming employee said, adding that subscriber count is the main focus. They said engagement should improve as Hulu and ESPN fold into Disney+ through the bundle, though.

Engagement still matters to Disney. A second streaming employee said hours watched largely determine if shows or movies are considered hits, though content can also be deemed successful if it drives signups.

Disney won't go back to growth at any cost, however.

"Management's made it absolutely crystal clear that yes, they want growth — but it's got to be profitable growth," said media analyst Joe Bonner of Argus Research.

Growth rarely comes cheap in streaming, as Paramount+ and Peacock have learned.

Paramount+ has been a consistent leader in new streaming signups, data firm Antenna found. The company said this month that its global subscriber base had risen 11% in the last year to 79 million.

And while Peacock plateaued for a time after the Olympics, the US-only service added 5 million subscribers last quarter, taking its total to 41 million.

Despite those gains, neither service is profitable, though both are getting closer. Still, Bonner expects to see the two eventually join forces through a merger or bundle, reasoning that "it's hard to see them surviving on their own."

Some on Wall Street are also perplexed by Apple's streaming strategy. Apple TV+ has high-quality shows, but a shallow library means it's plagued by an industry-leading churn rate, per Antenna.

"I'm not sure what the play with Apple TV is," Conca said.

Apple's services chief, Eddy Cue, has acknowledged the challenge of building a streaming library from scratch.

"We're betting everything on the shows that we're doing," Cue said in March. "The ones that we do, they all need to stick. Otherwise, we have nothing else."

All about the bottom line

While all of these streamers are looking to make money, some are more focused on profitability than others.

WBD once hoped Max would challenge Netflix. In 2023, it dropped HBO from its streamer's brand so the service could have "truly something for everyone," as CEO David Zaslav once said.

But after a slow start, executives pared content spending and doubled down on its strengths.

"We're not going to flood the zone," Zaslav said on the company's first quarter earnings call. "We want to be telling the best stories, and we want to also be taking advantage of all the great quality content over the years."

Max no longer aspires to be a Netflix killer, but it may not have to be.

WBD successfully bundled its streamer with Disney+ and Hulu. Max is smaller than streaming titans but is steadily growing, though that's mainly due to international expansion.

While Max now has a lower ceiling, it's profitable. That's crucial for WBD, considering its hefty debt load. Max might not win the streaming wars, but it can still be a winner.

• Those borrowing an HBO log-in to watch "The White Lotus" and "The Last of Us" are on borrowed time.
• But Warner Bros. Discovery isn't cracking down on all Max freeloaders immediately.
• Instead, WBD will gently prompt users to get their own accounts in the next year or so.

Warner Bros. Discovery is putting a stop to password mooching — eventually.

HBO's parent company is now telling users that they need their own Max accounts to catch up on "The White Lotus." WBD wants users to make their own accounts or get their account holder to pay an extra $8 a month to give them access.

Netflix popularized that "paid sharing" strategy to great success, and Disney is doing the same.

But those mooching off their friend's account don't have to reach for their credit cards just yet. While WBD is starting to gently encourage freeloaders to pay up, executives said they wouldn't play hardball for a while.

"It's very soft messaging that will start getting firmer and more visible to subscribers over the months to come," WBD's global streaming head, JB Perrette, said Thursday on the company's earnings call.

This paid-sharing initiative has a 12- to 18-month timeline, Perrette said. It's starting in the US and is set to move next year to the rest of the world, where Max is still rolling out.

Anti-mooching messaging will get "more assertive" later this year and in early 2026, Perrette said.

Paid sharing could boost Max subscribers

WBD isn't alone in following Netflix's lead, as NBC is warning Peacock subscribers not to share passwords with their friends. Paramount, Amazon, and Apple haven't done so yet, but certainly could if Disney's and WBD's paid-sharing strategies pay off.

Max has made progress since its launch five years ago and rebrand from HBO Max in 2023. WBD has 57.6 million streaming subscribers in the US, up about 5 million from a year ago. The company has also grown its global customer base by more than 22 million customers, though that's largely due to rollouts in Southeast Asia and Europe.

Streaming advertising revenue surged 35% from last year in the first quarter.

A paid-sharing rollout could further boost WBD's streaming subscriber count, though engagement — and therefore advertising — could take a hit if freeloaders conclude that Max isn't worth paying for.

• Early data shows the Disney and Max bundle beats Netflix in terms of subscriber retention.
• Three months after its launch, 80% of subscribers stuck with Disney and Max.
• With Netflix dominating, analysts have predicted a "mega-bundle" could arrive in the coming years.

New data suggests there's one clear way streaming services can compete with Netflix: bundling.

A power-in-numbers approach could pose a threat to Netflix's unrivaled loyalty in the streaming market.

In terms of subscriber retention, the Disney and Max bundle — which launched in July and starts at $17 — came out on top in the months following its launch, according to new data from the analytics company Antenna.

From July to September 2024, 80% of subscribers stayed with the service. That put it ahead of Netflix, which kept 74% of customers over the same period.

Disney's in-house bundle — without Max — also trounced individual services like Hulu, Disney, and Max in terms of retention.

WBD reported earnings yesterday for the first time since splitting its linear TV business from studios and streaming. It announced 117 million subscribers and forecasted 150 million by 2026.

While that's still a fraction of Netflix's 300 million, EMARKETER analyst Ross Benes said "aggressive" bundling had kickstarted growth at WBD, where US subs have remained flat "even after adding live sports."

"Bundles viewers tend to pay a lower price, thus generate lower [average revenue per user] generally," Benes said, "but bringing them into the fold expands audience reach."

Analysts have previously touted bundling as a prospective remedy to Netflix's dominance.

TD Cowen analysts have predicted a mega-bundle comrpising legacy TV players could be afoot in coming years as the best path to profitability amid surging content and marketing costs.

Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, and Disney didn't respond to requests for comment.

• Despite what some analysts predicted, the sky hasn't fallen at Warner Bros. Discovery without the NBA.
• The company's new deal with the cable giant Comcast is better than some anticipated.
• Those at WBD are thrilled to have saved money on NBA rights while avoiding a carriage-fee disaster.

It looks like Warner Bros. Discovery didn't "have to have the NBA" after all.

A year and a half after WBD's CEO, David Zaslav, gave that quote, the NBA's broadcast partner of four decades was outbid by Disney's ESPN, Comcast's NBC, and Amazon for the league's next TV deal, valued at $76 billion over 11 years.

Zaslav was widely chastised for allowing NBA rights to slip through his fingers after appearing indifferent about their value at a time when live sports seemed like it could be the cable bundle's only hope. Some media analysts said WBD underestimated NBC's bid and that the value of its TV networks would take a major hit without the NBA.

But the worst didn't happen. The media conglomerate has managed to secure higher rates for most of its TV networks from Charter and Comcast, the two largest cable providers in the US, people familiar with the terms of the deals told Business Insider.

The Comcast deal is particularly notable, as some in the industry expected the cable giant to drive a hard bargain. Comcast and WBD surprised the industry on Monday when they announced they'd reached a carriage-renewal deal. The financial terms weren't disclosed, but people familiar with them told BI that Comcast's affiliate fees for TNT would remain flat and that it would pay slightly more for WBD's other networks. In return, Comcast customers in the US, the UK, and Ireland can get Max for free.

This new deal, especially TNT's fees remaining flat without the NBA, looks like a win for Zaslav that certainly wasn't guaranteed just a few months ago.

No NBA, no problem?

Before the Charter and Comcast deals were announced, the general feeling in the media world was that pay-TV providers could play hardball and demand lower affiliate fees for WBD's networks, especially an NBA-less TNT. Shrinking affiliate fees and weaker ad revenue from lower ratings could be disastrous for debt-riddled WBD.

Instead, in mid-September, WBD struck a deal with the cable giant Charter in which it secured a flat rate for TNT and higher rates for other channels like CNN, HGTV, and Discovery. However, doing so took a key concession: giving away its Max streaming service.

The Charter deal was heralded as a success, with Zaslav a "clear winner" in the eyes of the veteran media analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed. Greenfield had said that if WBD could fend off a major decline in affiliate fees in its next deals, then "investor fears are misplaced."

Still, another major test was ahead: WBD's negotiations with Comcast. Some observers thought WBD got a sweetheart deal from Charter since the cable legend John Malone was on the board of both companies, but they expected Comcast would take no prisoners. LightShed's Brandon Ross predicted that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts would be aggressive in negotiations.

The terms WBD and Comcast agreed to are remarkably similar to WBD's deal with Charter, and each came together more than a year before key deadlines. "Most favored nation" clauses mean cable providers can get similar terms as their competitors, but some analysts thought Comcast would get a better deal that Charter could match in retrospect.

Company insiders seemed pleased with the deals, though the WBD side seemed especially thrilled. Some people within the company believed they'd been vindicated after taking heat for losing the NBA.

Those with knowledge of WBD's thinking said the company could actually be better off without the NBA now that it avoided carriage-fee cuts. Instead of paying up for the NBA, whose ratings are down so far this season, the company can invest in other sports or pay down debt.

Unlike Amazon or Comcast, which have other businesses that can help subsidize their NBA rights, WBD would have needed its NBA investment to pay for itself — mainly through carriage fees, advertising revenue, and subscriptions to Max, which airs the NBA on TNT. And the company wasn't sure that would be possible if it paid significantly more money for fewer games.

So while the WBD hoped to keep the NBA at the right price, it was prepared to walk away — hence Zaslav's surprisingly blunt quote. By opting for plan B, WBD sent the message that its priority was keeping costs in check and paying down debt.

WBD shares are up by 58% since mid-September, suggesting that the market is rewarding the company for passing on the NBA — even though doing so was controversial.