Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison on Monday boasted that once his company also owns Warner Bros. Discovery, the media giant will have a bit more than 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers. If anything, he was underselling. At the end of 2025, Paramount+ had 78.9 million subs and Warner Bros. Discovery had 131.6 million, including linear HBO and Discovery+. So that’s 210.5 million subs, not counting BET+, which would be an almost immaterial addition. And by the time the deal closes, which Ellison estimates to be the third quarter of this year, the tally should only grow higher.
All-in it’s a nice number, though still no Netflix, which reported it surpassed 325 million subscribers as of Dec. 31. Of course, Netflix is currently available in many more regions (190) than HBO Max (about 90 markets) and Paramount+ (about half that). It is almost certainly significantly smaller than Amazon Prime Video’s overall reach, but Amazon doesn’t publicly share its subscription numbers.
One of the reason’s Ellison may be slightly underselling is because he’s also somewhat overselling.
Ellison stated on the same conference call that he will combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into one service. To get a true sense of how many streaming subscribers the combined service would have, one has to remove duplication.
Streaming researcher Antenna estimates that as of January 2026, Paramount+ had 35.8 million paying subscribers in the U.S., where HBO Max had 27.1 million paying subs.
Importantly, that does not include linear HBO subs, which Ellison included with the DTC catch-all phrasing. Antenna does not measure cable subs and select bundles, like for those who access Paramount+ through a Walmart+ membership (more details here). It also does not track free trials or subs outside of the U.S.
But it does track crossover: Antenna estimates that 7.6 million U.S. subscribers have both HBO Max and Paramount+. That means about 27.9 percent of U.S. HBO Max subscribers already have Paramount+, and 21.1 percent of U.S. Paramount+ subs also pay for HBO Max. In sum total, almost 14 percent of the total subscriber pool here between HBO Max and Paramount+ already subscribes to both services. It stands to reason that should guide, imperfectly, in shared international markets.
It’s important to note here that a de-duplication of subscribers would not create an exact one-to-one consolidation of subscription revenue. After all, Paramount+ and HBO Max will not cost what Paramount+ or HBO Max cost. It almost certainly will also not cost what Paramount+ and HBO Max cost, either. As ARPU (average revenue per user) rises, overall subscription revenue will follow.