How HBO Max, Prime Video, and other streamers are trying to grow in a crowded market, including, sources say, via discounted bundles and deals with rivals
In a crowded marketplace, Amazon, HBO Max and other streamers explore discounted packages and partnerships with rivals
Context & Ripple Effects
The streaming market has been fragmenting since Apple TV+ entered an already crowded field of overlapping services in 2019, leaving each player fighting for the same subscriber wallets with standalone apps. The WSJ report shows the industry's response: HBO Max, Prime Video, and peers are quietly exploring discounted bundles and partnerships with direct rivals rather than going it alone.
There is precedent on both sides of this move. Amazon floated bundling other online video subscriptions into Prime Instant Video back in 2015, and the rival-bundle idea has since matured into concrete talks like Apple and Paramount discussing a combined TV+ and Paramount+ package. Bundles and cheaper ad tiers are becoming the two main levers for growth once standalone sign-ups stall.
First-order effects
- HBO Max and Prime Video gain a cheaper customer-acquisition channel: shared bundles let each service reach the other's audience without matching rivals' content spend dollar-for-dollar.
- Subscribers get lower effective prices per service, while the partnering streamers accept reduced per-subscriber revenue in exchange for volume.
Second-order effects
- Streamers that stay out of bundle negotiations face a distribution disadvantage against packaged rivals, pressuring holdouts like Netflix and Disney to strike their own cross-service deals.
- Bundles push pricing power toward whoever controls the checkout — Amazon's Prime storefront position means partner services increasingly compete for placement inside someone else's subscription.
Third-order effects
- If rival-to-rival bundling becomes standard alongside ad-supported tiers — which Antenna data shows already attract the majority of new sign-ups — streaming re-aggregates into cable-like packages, just distributed by platforms instead of pay-TV operators.
- The structural winner is the aggregator: services become interchangeable channels inside bundles, shifting value from exclusive-content owners to whoever owns the billing relationship.
The trend: Streaming is reversing its fragmentation phase, with erstwhile rivals reassembling into discounted bundles as standalone subscriber growth runs out.