Max Will Start Cracking Down on Password-Sharing This Year, Warner Bros. Discovery May Disable Accounts of Violators

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Warner Bros. Discovery has jumped on the password-sharing crackdown bandwagon, with a top exec saying Max will begin enforcing restrictions on subscribers sharing accounts outside their household starting this year — following the trail blazed by Netflix, which was more recently joined by Disney.

J.B. Perrette, president/CEO of global streaming and games at Warner Bros. Discovery, announced the coming crackdown on Max password sharing this week at the 2024 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference.

Regarding cracking down on password sharing, Perrette commented that “obviously Netflix has implemented [that] extremely successfully.

We’re going to be doing that starting later this year and into ’25, which is another growth opportunity for us.” Perrette declined to quantify the upside he expects from the move, saying “I’m conscious of not overselling it.” Max is not at the same scale as Netflix, he added, “but we think relative the scale of our business it’s a meaningful opportunity.” Netflix added 29.5 million net new subscribers in 2023, up from an annual average of 21 million in 2020-22, boosted by its global implementation of “paid sharing,” a program that prompts users who are borrowing someone else’s account to sign up for their own plan or to have primary account holders add them as an “extra member.” Disney is similarly cracking down on password sharing among Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ subscribers.