Why HBO Max Hasn't Cracked Down On Password Sharing Yet

The era of traditional television is being phased out, slowly but surely, in favor of a streaming-focused future, for better or worse. Broadcast and cable viewership is declining steadily each year, meaning media companies have to ensure that their respective streaming offerings are increasingly profitable so that they can stay ahead of the game. Case in point, many streaming services have started to crack down on password sharing in recent years. So, why hasn't HBO Max done that yet? We have an answer, but it's not necessarily an encouraging one for consumers, looking at the big picture.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav spoke during the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology conference on September 10, 2025. Per Variety, he addressed the password-sharing issue and explained why the company hasn't begun cracking down on that when it comes to HBO Max. Here's what he had to say about it:

"We haven't been pushing on the password sharing and the economics yet. People are really starting to love HBO Max. That's the key. We want them to fall in love with our content, with our series, with the differentiated offering outside the U.S. and then over time, it's a little tricky, with the password sharing, we're going to begin to push on that."

As Zaslav tells it, right now, they want to get the hooks into more customers for the time being. But he's certainly not ruling out cracking down on password sharing, and for good reason. Netflix added millions of new subscribers when it began cracking down on users sharing passwords in 2023. Unfortunately for consumers, the economics support this strategy.

For the moment, Netflix is the clear-cut winner of the streaming wars. Everyone else is playing catch-up, gunning for second place. Netflix has 301.6 million total subscribers, per FlixPatrol, while HBO Max has 125.7 million, behind both Disney+ (127.8 million) and Amazon Prime Video (200 million). So Warner Bros. Discovery has some ground to make up in that department, to be certain.

The industry has largely followed in Netflix's footsteps, with Disney cracking down on password sharing on Disney+ and Hulu in 2024. The biggest problem is that, for the moment, streaming is either unprofitable for some of the streamers or very narrowly profitable. On a longer timeline, they need these services to be much, much more profitable. Zaslav, speaking further, explained that they hope to be able to raise prices for HBO Max more in the future as people begin to love the service more.

"I think our ability to raise price as people become more and more in love with the quality that we have and the series that we have and the offering that we have will have a real ability because I think the pricing across the board — not only is there too many players, in order to stay alive, a lot of the players have just decided to drop prices aggressively."

"Consumers in America would pay twice as much 10 years ago for content," Zaslav continued. People were spending, on average, $55 for content 10 years ago, and the quality of the content, the amount of content that we're getting, the spend is 10 or 12 fold, and they're paying dramatically less. I think we want a good deal for consumers, but I think over time, there's real opportunity, particularly for us, in that quality area, to raise prices."

None of this is particularly encouraging for anyone reading this who is tired of paying increasingly high prices for the many services on the market. HBO Max does have quite a few in-demand shows that can make it essential for many viewers, but what are the limits of that? At what price point does it become inessential? And how many of the people who currently share a password are going to be willing to get their own subscription? These are questions that will need to be addressed on a longer timeline.

Rest assured, Zaslav and Co. aren't going to let sleeping dogs lie. They're going to continue to maximize profits little by little in the coming years. Streamers raise prices little by little, and that's kind of built into the model at this point. HBO Max won't be any different.