HBO Max Reaches Nearly 77 Million Subscribers Globally

AT&T, the parent company of WarnerMedia, has announced new subscriber figures for HBO Max and HBO--and the platform is growing in a big way.

Total HBO Max and HBO subscribers reached 76.8 million for the fiscal first quarter ending March 31. This is up 12.8 million year-over-year. In the US specifically, HBO Max and HBO reached 48.6 million subscribers, which is up 4.4 million compared to this quarter last year.

AT&T's announcement of new subscriber numbers for HBO Max comes just days after Netflix confirmed it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the past three months and expects to lose 2 million more in the months ahead. In the wake of this, Netflix's stock price took its biggest hit since 2004.

Comparing Netflix and HBO Max is not perfect, complete, or strictly fair, given Netflix has been in the market for much, much longer than HBO Max and there are plenty more factors and subtleties at play. For its part, Netflix had 222 million subscribers by the company's latest count.

HBO Max has a number of upcoming TV series and films in the works, including the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, which arrives on August 21. HBO Max just added The Batman this week.

In other streaming news, Netflix announced that it is now considering an ad-based tier in the wake of its falling subscriber numbers. Founder Reed Hastings said such a model has worked out for companies like HBO, Disney, and Hulu, and Netflix might follow suit in the future.