Regular readers will know that I’ve been fascinated by what has been going on between Sky and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD).

In short, WBD is going to launch Max in the UK in 2026, but for many years now, there has been an output deal between WBD’s HBO and Sky. This has meant that massive HBO shows like Game of Thrones and The Last of Us have appeared on Sky’s channels in the UK, Germany and Italy.

Sky Atlantic, the Comcast-owned Sky’s premium drama channel, has relied heavily on this output deal. Indeed, aside from Premier League Football, it’s perhaps the most valuable part of Sky’s consumer offer.

But over time, WBD has been rolling out Max globally. The European Sky territories have been at the very back of the queue because of those pre-existing output agreements. And that has led to a very difficult situation between WBD and Sky.

In September, Sky lodged a complaint in a US court over WBD reneging on parts of the two companies’ contract – specifically highlighting the fact that WBD had not allowed Sky to co-fund the upcoming new Harry Potter series, which would have in due course allowed Sky to broadcast the show for many years on its platforms.

Today came news that peace has broken out between the two broadcasters.

An agreement has been reached between Sky and WBD that encompasses what happens in a future world when Max launches in the UK in 2026. Basically, until then, Sky continues to access HBO shows as before. It seems as though shows that had already started their runs prior to the end of 2025 will continue to be made available to Sky customers on Sky’s platforms beyond that date. So fans of House of the Dragon, The Last of Us and The White Lotus should not only see 2025 episodes of those shows on Sky, but subsequent series too. But new shows, like the forthcoming Harry Potter series which isn’t due to arrive until 2026, and some future Game of Thrones spin-offs, will then be exclusive to Max.

However, Sky will be bundling the advertising tier of Max to all its customers when it launches. So Sky while Harry Potter won’t show up on the Sky Atlantic linear channel, it’ll be in the Sky garden under a Max tile, much in the same way that Paramount+ shows find their way onto the platform today (Paramount+ is bundled free to Sky Movies subscribers, while others can add it to their Sky accounts).

Sky will also have access to “Pay 1” WBD movies for their Sky Cinema channels, although it’s not clear whether that’s in addition to those films being on Max in that early “window.” I would assume so.

And as part of this agreement, Sky’s parent company Comcast has renewed its deal with WBD for continued carriage of WBD’s linear channels on its Xfinity cable business in the US. These include TNT, TBS, CNN, Discovery, Food Network, HGTV, TLC, and Investigation Discovery.

Those first two are interesting because WBD is shortly going to lose its live NBA rights following a major new agreement between the NBA and ESPN, NBC and Amazon. While a legal case that WBD had brought against the NBA was recently settled via an agreement for WBD to continue to produce the Inside the NBA show for ESPN, and giving them a package of highlight rights, there is a view that the loss of live NBA had left WBD’s US broadcast channels like TNT and TBS in a much less valuable position. It seems likely that this agreement will have settled a new payment structure for those channels, and likely seen fees for them fall.

Neither press release has mentioned the Sky court case referenced above, but according to reporting in The Guardian, it has indeed been dropped as part of this agreement.

And the other thing I notice is that the agreement is specifically for Sky UK (and Comcast Xfinity in the US). There is no mention of Sky’s other European markets – Italy and Germany. Max is also due to launch in both countries in 2026, around the same time as it launches in the UK. But they’re both important markets for Sky. Perhaps the finer details in those countries has not been worked out?

It’ll now be interesting to see whether WBD starts to hold back more programming from the market in the UK ahead of the impending launch of Max. I’ve mentioned before that Hacks season 3 has not shown up on Amazon Prime Video, despite it being a show garlanded with Emmy Awards, and having arrived in the summer in the US. Has Amazon not wanted to buy season three? Or has it not been made available for sale by WBD? Other shows have continued to be sold on the open market, with series showing up on the BBC and ITVX amongst other places. But WBD will want to make a splash in the UK when it launches.

In the end, Sky needed a deal with Max, and Max needed a deal with Sky.

It’s not going to be easy to launch a new streamer in the UK and expect millions of subscribers instantly. By being packaged as a “free” add-on by Sky, it instantly gives the service millions of subscribers (albeit to the lower advertising tier), and Sky helps out with the promotion.

My suspicion is that Paramount+ is heavily reliant on its own Sky deal for UK subscribers. The only other route that these kind of providers have is if they do deals with phone companies, or even banks – I get Apple TV+ via my bank account now!

I also wonder at what point Comcast simplifies some of its branding. In the US it has NBC and Peacock (with “SpinCo” recently announced as being the working-titled home of its cable channels when it moves them out of the parent company). And in the UK, Sky has both Sky and NOW.

This just gets very messy when Sky and Peacock spend lots of money together on a prestigious new series like The Day of the Jackal. Star Eddie Redmayne goes on The Graham Norton Show who duly has to say that the show is available on Sky and NOW. But those are meaningless when a US viewer sees the clip on YouTube and needs to understand that she can see it on Peacock.

The Peacock branding existed in the UK for about five minutes before someone in a marketing team in Isleworth realised that perhaps introducing yet another brand into the UK wasn’t a good idea.

But I digress.

Update: This Ampere Analysis piece is very good.