As part of its Q1 2021 results report presentation, Vrio, AT&T’s unit that controls DirecTV’s operations in Latin America and Sky’s in Brazil, reported a total of 10.559 million subscribers. The figure shows a 383 thousand customers drop in relation to the 10,942 million that the company had reported at the end of Q4 2020, and a 2,658 million reduction regarding the 13,217 million subscribers that the company had at the end of Q1 2020.
After the announcement of the end of DirecTV’s operations in Venezuela, which took place in May 2020, Vrio reduced its subscriber portfolio from 13,217 million reported at the end of Q1 2020, to 10,664 million at the end of Q2 2020. However, in Q3 and Q4 2020, the company reported positive net additions, a trend that was reversed during the first three months of 2021.
In addition, days after AT&T announced the sale of a percentage of DirecTV’s operations in the US to the TPG Capital investment fund, John Stankey, CEO at AT&T, reported that the company he presides is also looking for options to sell the DTH’s operations in Latin America. This is the first time that an executive of the telecommunications company has officially expressed himself on this possibility.
HBO Max, WarnerMedia’s SVOD OTT, ended March with 44.2 million subscribers (between HBO and HBO Max in the US), thus featuring almost 2.7 million more subscribers than the ones the company reported at the end of 2020; and 7.8 million subscribers more than those reported as of March 31st, 2020. WarnerMedia will launch HBO Max in Latin America in June, and has recently announced DirecTV Latin America, Sky Brasil (AT&T) and Oi (Grupo Oi) as its first distribution partners in the region. Likewise, ‘Dias de Gallos’ and ‘Bunker’, the first two Max Originals that will be available on the platform once it is officially launched in the region, have already finished their filming processes. Apart from that, AT&T has recently announced during one of its last investor days that it will launch an AVOD version for HBO Max. However, the company has not confirmed if it will be available in Latin America.