With about 800,000 paying subscribers at the end of 2015, Time Warner will continue to focus on growing its standalone HBO Now product, stepping up marketing efforts, adding more content and inking new deals with emerging platform providers.
Time Warner launched HBO Now last April, initially targeting the 10 million broadband-only homes across the country.
On an analyst call about Time Warner's fourth quarter, HBO chairman Richard Plepler said that HBO Now still isn’t on two key platforms – PlayStation and Xbox consoles, which have made up about 20% of its online HBO Go viewing. That translates into greater opportunities for expansion.
“We’re excited about getting on additional platforms, we’re excited about bringing new content to the product which we think is going to draw people in on a daily basis and we’re going to begin to market more aggressively,” Plepler said.
New shows from former Daily Show host Jon Stewart, Vice Media and former ESPN pundit Bill Simmons are in the pipeline for the premium channel. Plepler added that the growth strategy is not exclusive to HBO Now but to the HBO product itself, which saw a 2.7 million increase in total subscribers in 2015.
“We’re going to work in a multifaceted way to expand our subscriber base and to expand our subscriber revenue,” Plepler said.
