HBO's CEO: I Don't Think Amazon Prime Competes With HBO's Standalone Streaming Service

The streaming wars are going to be hotter once Time Warner Inc TWX owned launches its streaming service next year. However, HBO already has a deal with Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN’s streaming service, Amazon Prime, that it signed earlier this year.

 

Streaming services are all about content, the better it is the more viewership and hence subscribers one can gather. So how will HBO be able to create a market for itself when it has already licensed its prized content to Amazon?

 

Richard Plepler, CEO of HBO was recently on CNBC to answer that question and to explain how HBO’s standalone streaming service would be unique from the already existing ones.

 

“I don’t think it competes at all”, Plepler said. “The most important thing to remember about our Amazon decision is its three year old window library and what we basically decided is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 65 or 70% of Amazon Prime subscribers do not get HBO, so we thought this was a terrific opportunity to not only monetize some of our library, but to give some of that consumer base an opportunity to sample and taste some of the best HBO programming.”

 

Plepler hopes that the content HBO is licensing to Amazon Prime helps bringing consumers “back into our system, so, they can become full Subs”. He highlighted that HBO “grew this year more than any time in 30 years” and that the move by HBO to license its content to Amazon will help it in gaining more viewership.