Time Warner Inc.’s Home Box Office unit, less than a year after launching its over-the-top HBO Now service in the United States, is expanding its OTT reach to Brazil and Argentina later this year.
HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler made the announcement at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference in San Francisco Wednesday.
“We’re going to go OTT in Brazil and we’re going to go OTT in Argentina as well this year, which is just a further expansion of our international growth,” Plepler said.
Plepler said Brazil is probably HBO’s biggest market in Latin America with about 30 million broadband homes and 70 million TV homes. Although HBO has about 30% penetration in Brazil, Plepler said the addition of the OTT offering will bring a “new dimension,” to the business.
“I think you are going to see more of that going forward,” Plepler said, adding that the Brazil and Argentina launches are being done with partners but declined to name them.
HBO Now launched in the U.S. in April and has since accumulated about 800,000 subscribers. It previously announced plans to launch the product in Spain and currently operates standalone streaming services in 9 countries – the U.S., Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Colombia, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore.
Domestically, Plepler said HBO Now is working on becoming available on more platforms, and will gain carriage on Sony PlayStations later this year.
