Since the beginning of the year the Streaming-Plattform Wow Similar to a supermarket the evening before a holiday weekend: almost everything you want is gone.
Because with the start of HBO Max In Germany, the Sky media group’s series and film payment service lost its exclusive rights to HBO content. To date, these have been the provider’s unique selling point. Many subscribers are probably wow streamers just because of the HBO series.
According to the IT magazine Golem, 110 series and 240 feature films have now disappeared there. For example, crazy series hits like “Sex and the City”, “Girls” and “Games of Thrones”. Of the few remaining series, only the latest seasons are usually available, so you can’t start a series again.
What is missing from Wow can now be found on HBO Max, which is in Germany started on January 13th. With 128 million subscribers, HBO Max is one of the five largest streaming providers in the world. The service was not yet available on the German market because Wow had secured the long-standing exclusive rights – which have now expired. Unlike Netflix and Prime, Wow hardly relied on its own productions, but rather relied entirely on exclusive HBO content.
What is the “overall character”?
According to the Hamburg consumer advice center, users have a special right of termination due to the loss of HBO content. Wow’s offer has been “significantly changed”, the “overall character” is different, so that the requirements for a special termination are met, write the consumer advocates on their website.
Sky sees it differently. The page with the cancellation form to which the consumer advice center linked has probably been changed: It is now clearly announced there that no special right of cancellation would apply because the “overall character” of the offer has not changed.
The “core of the program” is still included, only “some completed HBO series will no longer be part of the offer in the future”. Wow refers to the series “White Lotus”, where the last two seasons are still available, and to “Euphoria”, whose new season will be released in April.
Accordingly, numerous people on the social network Reddit reported that their special termination had been rejected. Instead, after discussions, they were offered a voucher for a month of HBO Max in order to catch up on the missing series. When asked by taz what was being offered to customers who wanted to make use of their special right of termination, a Sky spokeswoman simply reiterated that “the changes in the range of HBO content do not result in a special right of termination”. “It is common for licensing rights to change in the streaming market,” said the spokeswoman.
Shortly before the end
“It doesn’t surprise us that Wow wants to keep its customers in the contracts,” a spokeswoman for the Hamburg consumer advice center told taz. “If consumers stop making payments after the termination has been given and Wow insists on doing so, a court will ultimately have to decide.”
In doing so, Sky is exploiting the power it has as a large company with a legal department and capital over individuals for whom legal action is associated with disproportionate costs. Particularly spicy: On Black Friday at the end of November, Wow advertised very discounted annual subscriptions, touting “exclusive and award-winning top series, including from HBO,” even though it was already foreseeable that this content would soon disappear from the platform.
According to the consumer advice center, whether this could be viewed as unfair competition and consumer deception needs to be examined more closely. “You have to look at the advertising carefully and of course the company must have already known that the licenses would no longer be available to it in the near future,” said a spokeswoman.
Wow’s actions seem like a last desperate fight for survival. In addition, Sky has also lost its exclusive Bundesliga rights. This raises the question: How does the media company position itself with its streaming platform Wow in the future? Or is everything heading towards bankruptcy?
“Wow is almost at the end,” says media scientist Marcus S. Kleiner, professor at SRH University of Applied Sciences Berlin, to taz. “Not relying on in-house productions was a strategic mistake. This made the company dependent on studios and other rights holders.” In-house productions, on the other hand, are central to retaining subscribers and standing out from other providers. “Wow has not developed in keeping with the times, has sat back too much in an already growing business area”, is Kleiner’s assessment.
However, he can only guess at the reason why Wow’s management didn’t rely on in-house productions. “Perhaps there was no capital available for in-house productions or there were no good ideas, authors or production companies to rely on.”
Wow is trying to compensate for the loss of HBO content. A spokeswoman for the taz said they had “targeted investments in content and partnerships”. She cited Sony, NBC Universal, Sky Studios, Disney and ZDF as examples. The latter, fee-financed content can be accessed free of charge via the media library in Germany anyway and is therefore not an argument for a Wow subscription.
In any case, the future of Wow probably lies in the hands of RTL. The media group is planning to take over Sky Deutschland; the deal is currently being examined by the EU Commission’s competition authorities. A decision is expected this year, probably in the first half of the year. The German media supervisory authority Commission for determining concentration in the media sector (KEK) has already given her blessing.
“It will probably no longer be decided at the management level of Wow itself what will happen next with Wow,” says media scientist Kleiner. “It is conceivable that Wow could be completely absorbed into the RTL+ streaming offer and then the brand would disappear from the market.” However, RTL+ currently has a cooperation with HBO Max: both subscriptions are available at a discount as a bundle.
This is probably no consolation for the HBO series fans who are now tied to a Wow subscription: instead of the advertised “award-winning” content, they are served things that they did not want. And they would have to put additional money on the table for the missing HBO content. Either way.