The team has made some structural changes and we’re beginning to harness the entire data footprint of Warner Bros. Discovery as we roll this out, upfront cancellations are [indiscernible]. So that’s the US market. And again, forget about the streaming side of it, which, as I said, is growing at north of 50%. Internationally as well, and while there is no such thing as one international market, it is a mixed picture, but the key markets, the most relevant markets for us in Europe specifically, are doing very well. Again, Poland is doing incredibly well. We’ve got very, very strong network positions there. Italy has seen real upswing in programming. We’re the fastest growing group in that market, and that’s all flowing through to advertising.
And even in those markets that historically have underperformed a little bit for us such as the UK, the Nordics, those numbers are looking much more stable now than they did in the fourth quarter. Again, this is seven weeks into the year. I don’t want to make any predictions, but we’re in a much, much better place today than we were.
JB Perrette: On the Max side, Jessica, in terms of the international rollouts, I mean, I think David — as David said in his remarks, one of the things that’s sort of misunderstood when people look at our subscriber numbers versus certainly our larger peers is the point he made in his remarks, which is that, we are currently available — our TAM is less than half the size of those larger peers. So that means we have still 2 times the addressable market to go after — the other half of the addressable market to go after. We are excited that in 2024, we’re getting back to growth in new market rollouts, which is the first time in two years as we’ve been, obviously, hard at work retooling the platform and the technology and getting it right in the US, with LatAm launch next week, Europe starting in the second quarter with two brand-new markets in France and Belgium starting in the second quarter.
Asia and Australasia will likely be more by 2025. And then the rest of the European markets for now slated more for 2026. So that’s sort of how we see the rollout coming, and we think that’s a huge tailwind for us for growth and subscriber growth and revenue growth over the next 24 months.
Gunnar Wiedenfels: And then Jessica, on the third-party sales, and I’ll let David weigh in as well, of course, but we are doing exactly what we said we were going to do. There is no religion with regards to warehousing all of our content on Max or not doing business with competitors. We are one of the greatest makers of content in the world, and we serve our own platforms and we serve third-party platforms. And the honest answer is, I can give you a sort of high level direction. We’re looking at this case by case, and we’ve got a process in place. We have the best possible view now on what the strategic, the financial merits of exploitation of our own platforms versus partial exploitation with third parties are. And we have healthy discussions.
And what you will notice is, we haven’t sold anything since we closed the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. We have done some co-exclusive deals, and that makes a lot of sense. We’ve got all the data. We know exactly what we’re giving up, and we know exactly what we’re winning. Now, at the same time, we are having tough discussions internally. We look at the data together and there are definitely certain red lines, and David makes sure that we never cross them. But in other cases, we’ve gone with some deals that have garnered some press attention and that I am very, very happy with because we’re doing the right thing. We’re providing oxygen to our content and we’re optimizing returns here, not only for the company or shareholders, but also for the talent that we’re working with.
We are doing the best we can to make those great stories and monetize them in the best possible way.
David Zaslav: The point that Gunnar made, when we do sell content, we do it only co-exclusively so that we hold on to everything. There’s nothing that we want that’s on Max that we would sell and wouldn’t be on Max anymore. I would put it in two categories. Channing is back in business quite aggressively, the Warner Bros. Television business. We have over 100 series, some of the best series on television, Shrinking, Abbott Elementary, Ted Lasso. We have some of the greatest talent on the TV side working with us. And so, that’s back up and we think we’re going to see a lot of — we’ll see a lot of opportunity there. On our library, we’re incredibly aggressive on the bottom end of it. There is a group of big branded programs that represent the core of who we are as a company.
And we’re — those are going to stay with us, and you’ve seen some big name shows, but most of those have been around for a very long time. They’ve already been syndicated on other platforms and we’re able to reap a significant amount of dollars from them. And so, that will be the balance. We probably have the biggest motion picture and TV library in the world, and our job is to really focus on how to monetize that with different windows.
Andrew Slabin: Next question.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ben Swinburne from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Benjamin Swinburne: Thank you. Good morning. Maybe for JB, just to follow-up on the direct-to-consumer Max strategy. You listed UK, Italy, Germany. I know those are Sky licensing deals. I’m assuming Australia, Japan have similar structures. So have you guys made the decision to sort of move out of those relationships and go direct to consumer? Or maybe you could just talk about your thoughts because you have had some nice deals in those markets in the past. And then for JB and maybe Gunnar, however you want to address it, great news to hear on the NBA conversations. Clearly, that would be a big positive to retain those rights. How do you think about making that work financially for the company? It’s not a big debate that linear TV is under pressure on the revenue side, and I think it’s probably safe to say the NBA costs are going to go up.
So how do you guys approach this from a kind of a P&L point of view when you think about exploiting the NBA for what I imagine will be another long-term deal? Thanks so much.
David Zaslav: Thanks, Ben. Look, the UK, Germany and Italy, and I think we’ve said it before over the last year, are key markets for us. We have deals in those markets with Sky, which is a — has been a — over the years, a great partner to us in many ways and will continue to be a great partner to us. But having our own direct-to-consumer product in those markets is a core strategic initiative of ours, and we’re already in business aggressively in those markets. In the UK, we have our direct-to-consumer Discovery+ product and we’re one of the leaders in sport in the UK where we have what — our partnership with BT, which we just rebranded as TNT Sports, and that has millions and millions of subscribers. And that partnership is going very, very well.
And so, the idea of coming into that market with the wealth of content that we have, and our content is — we see how well our content works in the UK, Germany and Italy. We could see the ratings of that content when it airs on Sky and the share that it gets in the aggregate. And so we think it’s — those will be real businesses for us and meaningful and real opportunity to grow economics and grow subscribers, but that’ll be in — beginning in 2026.
JB Perrette: And I’d just add, Ben, I think the thing that’s been most — in some ways, the most exciting for the international rollouts is that, as David mentioned in some of his prepared remarks, there are a number of distribution partners in all these markets that are very eager to find ways to help us get to market faster and scale faster. And doing it with a partner, in many cases, can drive a lot of efficiencies from a marketing standpoint and get us to scale very quickly. So those are also great and very good conversations. And ultimately, economically, I think, will be very interesting for us as we transition from more licensed model to a D2C model.
David Zaslav: Now, there are markets like, for instance, India, where we did a very attractive deal with Reliance. There are markets where we look and we say that for the near term, even in that case, we did not do a long-term deal, we get a chance to see how all of our content does. And if we think that we can be more profitable and build asset value in a market, we will go. In markets where we don’t and the economics are very compelling to sit out for a period of time, we’ll do that like we did in India. But Europe is core to us and Latin America. And so you’re seeing us really speak to that with these launches, and you’ll see it over the next 18 months.
Gunnar Wiedenfels: And then Ben, on the NBA, as you know, we’re in the middle of exclusive discussions here, so I want to lift it up maybe one level to a general statement on how we look at sports rights. We’re spending close to $20 billion sort of, on content and programming in the broadest sense, and every dollar we spend plays a different role across the portfolio. We generally like to own our content. That’s not the case with sports, but we obviously acknowledge the enormous value, reach value, emotional value of these deals. And we have been able to strike profitable deals and we’re always going to be disciplined. It’s very easy to lose control over sports rights investments. That’s not what we do. We’re going — we know exactly what value we assign and we stay disciplined during our discussions.
And if you take that into account, I think we have enormous opportunity to be much more efficient with our content spend overall across the entire company, and that will include certain areas in which, you’re right, you probably have to assume that there is inflation going forward. On the NBA specifically, we’ve had a very, very strong partnership for 40 years, and I certainly hope that we’re going to be able to continue that in the most positive way.
Andrew Slabin: Let’s see if we have time for one more quick one.
Operator: Your final question comes from the line of Robert Fishman from MoffettNathanson. Your line is open.
Robert Fishman: Thanks. Good morning. Two for you guys quickly, if I can. David, you’ve been vocal about the idea of rebundling. Do you think it’s inevitable that the digital streaming ecosystem will end up looking a lot like the old MVPD world? And maybe if you can talk about the benefit of bundling Max with other streaming services like Netflix through Verizon. And then for JB or Gunnar, can you talk about the future of Bleacher Report sports add-on product, given the sports JV announcement and anything you can share in terms of the engagement with sports on Max to date with the free option? Thanks so much.
David Zaslav: Thanks, Robert. Look, I think everything is driven by the consumer experience, and the consumer experience right now is cluttered, it’s awkward, it’s somewhat confusing. People have learned how to deal with it. You google what show, where a show is and — or where a sport is, but rebundling just makes an awful lot of sense. And this idea, I think we’ve transitioned out of the idea of subs at any cost. We’ve done that by getting Max profitable and really focusing on getting real subs with real economics and growing that like a real business. But the ability for a consumer to go to one place, the Verizon example is a good example, and Netflix is a great product. You put it together with Max and you can get those together, provide a very meaningful experience for people, and it makes it a lot easier to traverse across our universe and theirs.
In the longer term, I expect that there will be meaningful bundling. It’s going to happen in one of two ways. It’ll either be a bundling by an intermediary, a platform company like an Apple or an Amazon or a Roku, or what’s going on with Charter and Comcast, which is very compelling and I think very helpful to all of us in the content business, that these channel stores morph into places that have — just provide a simpler and easier and less anxious experience for people to find the content that they want and have it be simple and fluid. or we could do it ourselves, and I’ve always advocated that we should do it ourselves. And so we’re looking to do that domestically. We’re looking to do it outside the US. In some ways, the sports venture is trying to meet that very need that when you put our product together with Lachlan and Fox’s product together with the ESPN product, it just has a much better, more fluid, more simple consumer experience.
It’s not which channel is it on? It’s not where do I go? How do I go? Do I have it? Don’t I have it? It’s in one place. And I think more and more will be gravitating toward that.
JB Perrette: And I think Robert, on the B/R Sports part of the question, it really — it dovetails exactly with what David just said, which is we look at the overall the sports venture, this new sports venture, and the ability for the partners to bundle with their existing streaming services, and with our case, with Max is great for the consumer, make it much more simplified. And as it relates to, what does that mean for the existing B/R Sports that are on Max, look, we’ll have more to share with that over the coming months as the — we get closer to launch the venture, but obviously, it’s incredibly compelling to be able to say that we’ll be able to take the incredible entertainment offering that will be on the — that is on Max, along with the great aggregated, simpler, more compelling consumer offering of the joint venture and put those two together and offer them in a compelling fashion to the subscribers.
And as just as a note, obviously, in the meantime, we’re continuing to lean in on the Bleacher Report sports offering, and we’re incredibly excited over the next few months to bring all of our March Madness, including building up to the Final Four on Max for the first time here over the next 45 days, and then leading into the NBA playoffs a little bit later in the spring.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
