Platforms jostle for customers with tempting Black Friday promotions

With Black Friday around the corner, content platforms around the world have launched cut-price deals designed to encourage consumers to join their platforms.

In the US, Warner Bros. Discovery is offering 80% off HBO Max and Discovery+’s ad-supported subscriptions for three months. Available until November 28, the offer means US consumers can buy the ad-supported tier of HBO Max for $1.99/month. Discovery+, meanwhile, will be a bargain bucket price of $0.99 in the US & Canada.

Similar moves are afoot at Comcast, which has given subscribers to its Xfinity X1, Flex and Stream services a week of free viewing to selected content the likes of HBO Max, Amazon’s Prime Video, Showtime and AMC+. The move follows Q3 2022 results when Comcast reported the loss of 540,000 residential video subscribers.

In Germany, meanwhile, Vodafone’s Giga TV has launched a Black Friday weekend promotion which allows consumers to buy “99 films for 99 cents”. Films, which can be rented for 48 hours, include Jurassic World: A New Age and The Black Phone.

Other platforms offering deals across the much-hyped marketing period include Hulu in the US and Paramount+ in the UK. The latter is offering a half-price annual subscription for a limited period of time. Sweetening the deal is the fact that Paramount+ has just announced a release date for blockbuster movie Top Gun: Maverick (December 22). Also in the UK, Sky is offering deals around Sky Glass.