Since the gigantic merger between HBOMax and Discovery+ last March, WarnerMedia does not win for upsets. Between production screenings such as that suffered by European original series, insane cancellations such as that of ‘Batgirl’, massive removals of content from its catalog without prior notice and price increases, it was a matter of time before Warner Bros Discovery plummeted into the stock market .
puffing up figures
Unfortunately, the string of controversies has not stopped there, escalating even to more worrying levels. And it is that, according to The Wrap, Warner Bros. would have falsified the figures of HBO Max subscribers, increasing them with figures that would be around 10 million clientsin order to calm and attract shareholders and pave the way for the analysis of the merger between HBO Max and Discovery +.
These alleged facts, which would entail a violation of market laws, have been collected in a lawsuit filed by the Collinsville Police Pension Board; a group of shareholders who swapped their Warner Bros. shares for Warner Bros. Discovery, which fell from $24.78 to $11 a share after trading.
In the request, which It directly accuses Warner Bros. Discovery, its CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels and its CEO David Zaslav.points to an alleged premeditated concealment of “adverse information”, adding that “WarnerMedia unintentionally concentrated its investments in streaming and ignored its other lines of business, overstating the number of HBO Max subscribers by more than 100 million, including its AT&T customers who received access to HBO Max through commercial packages”.
We will see how all this ends but, of course, these are not good times for warnermedia and its streaming service.