• by Wayne Friedman , February 26, 2025

Looking at a maturing marketplace with increased competition, Warner Bros. Discovery now says it will not be looking to charge more for sports and news content to its Max ad-free “Standard” and “Premium” subscribers.

WBD originally announced that a B/R Sports Add-On would become available to Max subscribers at an additional cost.

However, at the same time, WBD now says that starting on March 30, B/R Sports and CNN Max content will no longer be available on Max’s "Basic with Ads" tier.

Max has three pricing tiers: "Basic with Ads" at $9.99/month, "Standard" at $16.99/month and "Premium" at $20.99/month.

Standard and Premium have no advertising, with Premium offering higher-quality video -- usually 4K streaming.

“Over the last year plus, we had the opportunity to assess how users engage with sports and news on Max, and we’ve been actively involved in exploring ways to evolve the sports distribution ecosystem in the U.S,” says JB Perrette, CEO/president of global streaming and games at WBD, in a release.

“We believe that the best place for that content for now is within the standard and premium tiers.”

This comes as sports and news content has become even more important to streaming. It also comes as WBD’s CNN and TNT networks are getting challenged in monetizing news and sports content respectively.

TNT recently lost a sports-rights battle to continue airing NBA basketball. Under pressure from competitors, MSNBC and Fox News Channel, CNN continues to seek new ways for monetization, as industry-wide subscribers continue to seek price adjustments on their overall monthly streaming costs.

In January, CNN talked up an effort to launch a new streaming service, saying the process was in its “early days.” Potential pricing was not disclosed.