AT&T Is Bundling HBO for Free With Unlimited Wireless Plan – Variety (Apr 5, 2017)
AT&T hasn’t bought Time Warner yet, but that’s not stopping it from doing deals involving Time Warner properties, including this new promotion with HBO. AT&T had already been using HBO as a lure for driving DirecTV Now subscriptions, as it’s bundled the channel first at a discounted rate and then free for subscribers. But now AT&T is also giving away HBO for free to its higher-tier unlimited wireless data customers. Though the merger hasn’t closed yet, there’s a good chance that future prospect has been part of the companies’ closer relationship on this side recently, and it’s easy to imagine more of this kind of thing should the deal go through. It’s never made sense that AT&T would seek to limit distribution of Time Warner content following the merger because that would be counter-productive for the content business even if it benefited wireless subscriber numbers. But zero rating and bundle discounts make a lot more sense, as they lock customers into a much higher total spend and likely lower churn at a fairly low customer acquisition cost, and of course once TW is part of AT&T the cash cost of deals like this will be minimal. And AT&T’s real goal with the merger isn’t so much synergies from owning content and distribution as it is simply owning content, because that’s where the real value is long term.
via Variety
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