Max’s password-sharing crackdown will begin next week

Max is joining the ranks of streaming platforms that are blocking excessive password sharing.

As reported by The Wrap, JB Perrette, Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO and president of global streaming and games, announced the change on 4 March 2024.

Speaking at Morgan Stanley’s 2024 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, Perrette said that limiting password sharing will be a “meaningful opportunity” for the company.

It’s worth mentioning that Warner Bros. Discovery has been struggling financially for several years but managed to limit its losses to $55 million in the last quarter of 2023 (from a $217 million loss in 2022). Moreover, the company gained 1.8 million direct-to-consumer subscribers.

Restricting password sharing is another step in reducing the company’s losses. Warner Bros. Discovery is thus following in the footsteps of Netflix, which stopped password sharing at the end of 2023, and Hulu, where restrictions were introduced earlier this year.

For more on this topic, check out at our round-up on the Disney+ password sharing ban.

When will Max introduce password sharing rules?

According to JB Perrette, Warner Bros Discovery. plans to enforce the changes at the end of 2024 and in early 2025. However, the exact dates have yet to be announced.

The changes will probably be introduced gradually in the countries where the Max or HBO Max service operates. This includes the US, Latin America and parts of Europe.

According to the information passed by JB Perrette, next week, Max subscribers will get a short reminder about the new Warner Bros. policy.

As Perrette pointed out:

This is an art and a science to try and tighten the filter of who’s in there. We’ll start some early messaging with some people who we think are in the higher tier of usage. We will offer a way to essentially add a member, starting in the first quarter. We will then start gradually as we get the data and start figuring out, with some explicit and implicit signals, how good we are at detecting. And then as we go through ’25, you’re going to see the filters get tighter and tighter.

What do the new password-sharing measures on Max involve?

So far, Warner Bros. Discovery hasn’t revealed any details of its new password-sharing approach. Presumably, more information on this subject will emerge in the coming months.

If it’s anything like Netflix, it will use a combination of monitoring IP addresses and address activity to spot any accounts that are repeatedly being used outside of one household. It could also have an option for when users are travelling, such as a one-time passcode.

What we do know, however, is that in addition to fighting password sharing, Warner Bros. is planning innovations in display advertising. Perrette mentioned the format of shoppable ads, among other things. However, in this case, too, we’ll have to wait for more information.