Hulu will offer subscribers access to HBO for $14.99/month and HBO-owned Cinemax for $9.99/month
just in time for Game of Thrones premiere Chris Mills / BGR : Hulu just gave you yet another way to watch HBO Swapna Krishna / Engadget : Add HBO to your Hulu plan before ‘Game of Thrones’ premieres Keith Nelson Jr / Digital Trends : Want to watch ‘Game of Thrones’ on Hulu? Now you can with HBO add-on Zac Hall / 9to5Mac : You can now subscribe to HBO through Hulu for $14.99/month Rani Molla / Recode : Hulu is adding HBO just in time for ‘Game of Thrones’ Andrew Wallenstein / Variety : Hulu Offers HBO, Cinemax As Subscription Add-Ons Mitchel Broussard / MacRumors : Hulu Launches Live and On-Demand HBO as $15 Per Month Add-On Option See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
HBO has spent two years prying its network loose from the cable bundle: first with the Apple-partnered HBO Now launch at $14.99, then by putting the channel on Sling TV, and most recently by letting Amazon Prime sell HBO and Cinemax side by side. Hulu is now the next big aggregator to carry both channels, at prices that exactly match Amazon's $15/$10 pairing.
The move also rhymes with Hulu's own playbook: when it added Showtime online, it undercut Apple, Roku, and Sony by $2 and paid for the discount out of pocket. This time there is no visible discount — just timing, landing weeks before the Game of Thrones premiere that reliably drives seasonal signups.
First-order effects
- Hulu subscribers can now add HBO and Cinemax inside their existing Hulu bill and app, removing the need for a separate HBO Now account or cable subscription ahead of Game of Thrones.
- HBO gains another large-subscription-base distributor at its standard $14.99 price, while Cinemax gets shelf space on a service where it had none.
Second-order effects
- With Amazon Prime already selling the identical $15/$10 HBO-Cinemax pairing, price stops being a differentiator among aggregators — competition shifts to convenience, billing consolidation, and which platform captures the signup relationship.
- Apple, Roku, Sony, and Sling TV face pressure to match the placement, since a subscriber choosing where to attach HBO will favor whichever app they already pay for.
Third-order effects
- Premium channels are becoming portable add-ons decoupled from any single distributor — a structure that points toward the larger multi-service bundles later seen with Disney+, Hulu, and Max sharing one checkout, and raises cannibalization questions for each platform's own originals.
- If every aggregator carries HBO at the same price, HBO's leverage over distributors grows while the distributors' margins on reselling it compress, pushing them to differentiate through exclusive originals instead.
The trend: Premium TV networks are turning into uniform cross-platform subscription add-ons, with aggregators competing on packaging and convenience rather than price.