The new AT&T video streaming service that the company expects to launch this quarter in competition with Netflix will have a price tag exceeding $15, according to reports coming out of the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in Los Angeles today.
John Stankey, CEO of AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit, told summit attendees that the new service, which will include HBO and other content, will cost more than HBO as a stand-alone streaming service, according to a report from Seeking Alpha. The stand-alone service, known as HBO NOW, has a regular price of $14.99 a month, although lower promotional prices are sometimes offered.
New AT&T Video Streaming Service
AT&T already has a couple of streaming video offers, including DIRECTV NOW and recently launched mobile focused AT&T Watch. Last month, Stankey revealed plans for a new streaming service that would incorporate HBO and other content obtained through AT&T’s Time Warner acquisition.
At today’s Vanity Fair Summit and in a financial filing released today, AT&T provided a few additional details about the next video streaming service.
Stankey reportedly told attendees at the conference that the new offering will have “other strong brands” in addition to the HBO content.
The AT&T 8-K filing stated that the new offering would be “a complement to our existing businesses” and would help the company expand its reach by providing “a new choice for entertainment with the WarnerMedia collection of films, television series, libraries, documentaries and animation.”
The company went on to say that “we expect to create such a compelling product that it will help distributors increase consumer penetration of their current packages and help us successfully reach more customers.”
The Competitive Scene
Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu currently are the leaders in the subscription video on demand category, but Stankey sees the combination of HBO and other content as very compelling to consumers. Just last month, Stankey called HBO “a very unique brand” that “carries very unique attributes for high quality, highly engaging scripted content, documentaries, some sports and a great library of movies.”
He went on to essentially denigrate HBO NOW, however, adding that HBO in itself “isn’t enough” in a direct-to-consumer offering. How accurate that assessment is should become clear when AT&T launches the new video streaming offering before the end of the year.
