Okay, here we go. It's Robert Fishman here again, and we are very excited to have a new guest for us and for most here, Gerhard Zeiler at Warner Bros. Discovery. So instead of me just reading your bio, I thought we'd maybe just kick off with you sharing with us your background, your experience. We've had the opportunity to get to know you in a few different iterations of Time Warner, WarnerMedia, you know, now Warner Bros. Discovery. So, I think you joined the company about 12 years ago now-
Yeah.
And just love to hear more about your background that you can share with everyone, and the responsibilities that you have today.
Yeah. So first of all, thank you for having me. Look, I started quite early in media in the public broadcasting of Austria. I'm Austrian. I started as the administrative director of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, then went to Germany and launched a small channel called RTL II. Then I went back to Austria to run the Austrian Broadcasting Company. So just to give you a size, it's a small country, but still roughly $1 billion of revenues.
And then after four years, I had enough with public broadcasting TV, so I was offered the job of a CEO of RTL in Germany, the biggest commercial channel in Germany already at that time. There was one network, and we increased it to four big networks. And then in 2003, I was promoted to head the whole RTL Group. RTL Group, it's a public company, but it's majority-owned by Bertelsmann. At the time, I also became an executive board member of Bertelsmann, and I stayed there for 13 years. 13 years since I started at RTL in Germany, so nine years as the CEO of RTL Group.
And then I had a long conversation, several conversation with Phil Kent, and it took him three months to persuade me that I join Turner and Time Warner. And I started as the head of Turner International. Smaller, much smaller than RTL Group, pay TV, but very interesting first job for an American company. And then when John Stankey bought, with AT&T, Time Warner and renamed it WarnerMedia, he wanted me, after nine months, to run the chief revenue officer position here in New York. So responsible next to the international business for global distribution, for global advertising.
And then Jason Kilar came in, changed the whole structure, and finally put the international business of then WarnerMedia together, HBO, Turner, and most of Warner Brothers. That I did until David called a few months before the merger and said: "I want you to stay, and I want you to be the head of the international business of Warner Bros. Discovery." So here I am.
Well, we're happy you're here, and I. Hopefully, I can share Phil Kent saying he's one of the, you know, best decisions he's ever made is bringing you aboard the company. So,
So I'll buy you dinner afterwards, Phil.
So here we are, right? So you clearly have had a really interesting seat, as you just went through all the different iterations of the company. Wondering if you could share with us, just very high level, what you're seeing today and really just helping investors understand how international is structured as a business for Warner Bros. Discovery. Clearly, it fits across all the different-
Yeah
. business segments.
So first of all, to give you a little bit of the size, and that's not new because it was released in the 10-K. The international revenues are roughly a third of the total revenues of Warner Bros. Discovery. And you know, our segments reporting are in three parts: it's studio, it's networks, and it's streaming. And we have, in the international business, all three segments are meaningful. Still, studios likely are more revenues than international networks.
Streaming currently, because we are not in a lot of markets yet, are still the smallest of the segment, but growing and for sure probably the most important revenue and growth driver in the future. So that's how the size and the presence of our international business. Now, how we are organized is quite simple. We are a matrix company, and there are parts where my team is fully responsible for, so networks business on the international side, for example, the content licensing business, the transactional business. There are parts where, especially streaming and us are working hand in hands.
And, we have one distribution team together. We have one local content team together. We have mostly one marketing team together, because that really makes sense to use the synergies, but also the leverage, the strength from both sides, streaming and linear. And then there are business units like theatrical, consumer products, games, where we help to execute the global strategy. And last but not least, there's CNN. CNN, of course, on the editorial side, that's purely done in the U.S., and it should be. Wouldn't make sense to do it differently.
When it comes to monetization, partly they do it themselves internationally, partly we do that. We do the distribution deals for them. We do part of the advertising deals for them. So that's the breadth of the international business, but most importantly, this is really. And that is, that is something which started with David taking over, David taking over. His, I almost must say, obsession from day one: we are one company. We have a one-company mindset. It's regardless of the most useless thing is to talk about reporting lines. It's really one company, and that's at least in the international business, we work that way.
That's really, really helpful to understand. So maybe if we start with linear first, because I think that's gonna set us up for, for the, the future streaming conversation. But maybe just help us understand how each of the key markets, and I know when we talk about international, you know, us as, as U.S.-focused, just kinda sweep that all under one, one umbrella.
But when we think about the, the different key markets, how cord-cutting is performing, depending on how specific you wanna be, but, but in the different regions, and really, what does that look like compared to the what we all know very well happening in, in the U.S.?
Look, to say it in a headline, the trend is the same. Streaming is growing, linear is declining, and streaming is growing roughly at the same pace, as in the U.S. But there are significant, meaningful differences between the viewing behavior in the U.S. and the viewing behavior internationally. And I start with the fact that cord-cutting started later in all of the international regions, and it's not as steep as in the U.S. Second, free-to-air, what you describe here in the U.S. as broadcasting, we describe it as free-to-air.
Free-to-air is still the key platform when it comes to viewings, how a consumer view video. It's in almost all of the major markets, over 50%, meaning that more than 50 out of 100 minutes which people watch video is watched on free-to-air. Germany, 72 minutes out of 100; Italy, 74 minutes out of 100; Spain, 69 minutes out of 100; Poland, 58; Brazil, 58; U.K., even 49%, so close to 50%. So that's the meaningful difference. It's really free-to-air, and I think the number, what I saw on Nielsen Gauge in March for the U.S., was something like 23% for broadcasting here, meaningful difference.
On the other hand, pay TV is much smaller. It's much less important international markets. So we have in the majority of the international markets, the share of viewing on pay TV is less than 10%. There are a few exceptions like Poland and Mexico, and the reason is that the pay TV penetration in most of the international markets never achieved the size of what it was here in the U.S. When you look at the pay TV penetration in most of the European markets, it's less than 50%. In some markets, like Germany and Spain, below 30.
In Italy and Brazil, below 20. So that's the reason why, when we talk about linear business in most of the international markets, there are exceptions. I mean, Netherlands and Korea are different, but in the main major markets, free-to-air is so important, and we are really glad that we are in Europe, have a very strong free-to-air business. But I would say, for us, the most important thing is we are a truly global company. That's really what is our advantage in international.
Awesome. So let's go to the free-to-air and actually tie that in to what we learned on the earnings call last week about the relative advertising strength in some of these key international markets. So I don't know if you want to rank them for us or however you want to share with us, but by region, as we think about LATAM, Western Europe, Poland has been an area of strength, and Asia Pacific, anything that we should think about how you're positioned, given the-
Yeah
P ortfolio that you have with free-to-air that you just went through, and how that's helping drive advertising dollars going forward?
Look, to give you roughly a picture about the size, yeah, I would say if you look at all of the Warner Bros. Discovery advertising revenues on the network side, international is roughly 20%, and three-quarters of it comes from Europe, yeah, especially driven by free-to-air. And yes, in Europe, which, as I said, is our most important region for advertising revenues, we even have more advertising revenues in Europe than distribution revenues. We outperformed the first quarter, yeah.
In most of the European markets, we had - we saw growth in the first quarter. In two countries, Poland and Italy, which are also our biggest ones, we have even. we had even double-digit growth, yeah? So a very justifying and a very satisfying picture in Europe in the first quarter, and this trend of Q1 at least we see it continue in April and May, maybe not at the same pace, but we have a very good also picture for Q2, and I don't see, and nobody of my team sees any sign that in the second half of the year this will change dramatically. Of course, nobody can see and forecast it.
There always can something happen, geopolitical or macroeconomically, but so far, no signs that this will dramatically be worse than it was in the first quarter and what we see also in the second quarter. The picture in Latin America is different in several ways. First of all, the advertising revenues in Latin America are much, much smaller, and the reason for that is that we only operate on the pay TV, in the pay TV ecosystem, and the pay TV penetration, roughly in average in Latin America, is something like 26-27%. Therefore, advertising is not that important, and it's much more of a distribution play in this region for us.
But most importantly, for both Latin America and also Europe, we started in Latin America when we launched Max in February. We started in all the markets, all 39 markets, with an ad- light tier. We call it ad- light, a tier with advertising. And that's important because we need to offer to the advertisers both sides, linear and digital. Especially when we look in Europe, where we will launch in two waves, as you know, in May and then June, we have nine markets. The four Scandi markets, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and Poland, Romania, where we'll also launch immediately a tier with advertising.
Okay.
So we feel really good in our position, and one thing is for sure: in most of the international markets, free-to-air is still a very powerful and important platform for the advertisers to reach the consumers.
I'm gonna come back to the launches in really one second, but I guess I'm most curious about, given the ad strength that you're seeing and maybe potentially different headwinds compared to the U.S., right? And potentially even tailwinds. Do you think about managing the cost base very differently, given the linear trends that you're seeing in those markets?
Look, it's no secret that, from day one, David, Gunnar and the whole leadership team said we have to, because also of the debt situation, we have to run our company as efficient as possible, so we did our part. But when I look forward, there are probably two different parts in the international sector. One is, when it comes to pay TV, let's run it as efficient as possible, and that also could mean that in some of the areas, we take costs out, also in the future. But when it comes to our free-to-air markets, then we need to defend that. We need to defend the ratings.
It's not only that, advertising is up because the market is up. Advertising up because our ratings, our audience performance is up. To really defend that is so important because when it comes to distribution revenue, so the distribution place, for example, in Latin America, negotiating both linear and streaming gives you flexibility, yeah? To bring value from linear to streaming in negotiations with the distributors.
When it comes to advertising, it will take time. As much as the advertising, the digital advertising on Max is important, it will take time to have the scale, yeah? And therefore, we need to really defend this advertising what we have in the international markets.
Yeah. So let's, let's go to, some of the, the launches that, that you started to touch on. And, and given, again, what, what you shared with us in terms of the, the lower penetration in some of these markets, I guess what. The first big question that I have is really, can you help us understand, like, why it's taken so long to, to launch in some of these markets from, from a rebranding perspective? And then, almost probably more importantly, how you see the opportunity to capture this whole other market that you haven't been able to-
Yeah
T o tap into, given the lower penetration rates.
Look, the team in the summer of 2022, immediately, a few months after the merger, the team looked at really at the technology and the product of HBO Max and Discovery+, and then made the, in my opinion, really wise decision: Let's get technology and product right instead of moving too fast. And the retooling of these platforms, the retooling and really get it right, took time and also took significant resources because neither the platform of HBO Max nor of Discovery+ was, let me say it very nicely, state-of-the-art. And we are really thrilled where we are with this product.
I mean, the ratings on the Apple Store jumped from a meager 3 to 4.9, and the Google Store at 4.7, and we launched in May last year in the U.S., really seamless. But even in Latin America, in February, but it's a much more complicated launch because different languages, a lot of different currencies, different regulatory rules, and thresholds. And not everybody, exactly, only a minority in Latin America, has a credit card. That went so seamless. I was there on both launches, in 2021, when we launched HBO Max in Latin America, and in February. What a difference, yeah? So the product and technology, we got right.
There will always be an improvement, no doubt about that, but I think it was the right decision to even take a little bit more time and to get that right. And when we look at EMEA, we have even more languages, a little bit less currency, but more languages when we do. The same thing, different regulatory regimes, but we are very confident that it will be as seamless in these two waves, in May and in June, what we have in Latin America. Now, the importance of international. I think, I think you can't be successful in streaming if you're not global.
That doesn't, doesn't mean to be in every single market, and anyway, neither China, Russia, North Korea or Iran, we will be able to do so. But, a global presence is important, because otherwise you are really disadvantaged when it comes to monetization compared to your peers. And also, when you want to get the transition right from linear to streaming, yes, it's at a different pace, market by market, region by region, and it's also advanced differently.
But when you want to get it right, and we, with our strong linear business, want to get it right, you need to have, besides your linear product, also a streaming product. So for us, and I don't think this is an exaggeration, that we say the international markets are of vital importance for the success of our streaming business.
That's very helpful to understand. You mentioned, you know, comparing the launches, you know, a couple of years ago versus what was happening in LatAm. I'm curious, any other lessons aside from technology and product, maybe on marketing or other ways to approach the launches differently this time around?
I think we said it, technology, important. Don't launch if you're not ready.
Okay.
So that's lesson learned number one. Lesson learned number two, I would say, we need a really more robust content offer than where we launched, for example, in Latin America in 2021. HBO is not only one of the most recognized brands in entertainment, it's fantastic, and I hope nobody is offended when I say, for me, it's the best brand.
But that alone, and only that, and the Warner Bros feature film, that's not enough. We need more. And this local content which we have, in all of the markets, that is really essential to have a much better satisfaction for our consumers, for our subscribers, when we, I think these are the two main lessons learned, from the last two years.
So I guess given that, and where we are today, roughly approaching 50 million, you know, getting very close.
46.9 at the end of Q1. Yeah.
Thank you. So, you know, DTC subscribers are gaining in scale, but I'm curious, given your prior comments about thinking about this from a global perspective, how would you say Max is currently positioned to compete with some of these other larger-scale players internationally?
Look, we are at the very early stages. We are in less than 50% of our competitors' addressable markets. Our revenue base, our revenue split between U.S., on the streaming side, between U.S. and international, is 80/20. You know from the others, it's much more skewed to international. We are not in four of the most important markets, U.K., Germany, Italy, Australia, two of them English-speaking. So that all will come.
Yeah.
That all will come. As I said before, it's of vital importance that we do that. We are happy where we are, but we just started. I think that is the best position what we have, and for the fact that we just started, the 46.9 million subscribers end of quarter one is not a bad number.
Right. So I'm curious, given what we're seeing happen in the U.S., more recently, where we've seen new bundle approaches, and clearly, Disney+ , Hulu, was part of that with you guys. In the U.S., we had some other news yesterday, with Brian Roberts announcing a partnership with Peacock and Netflix and Apple TV+. So how should we think about bundling as an opportunity for Max internationally?
I think it's no secret that we are big fans of bundling in the U.S., but also, of course, international, simply because it's a better consumer experience. But I wouldn't say, therefore, yes, we are open for bundling also internationally, if all the partners involved, if it makes sense for them. But I wouldn't only focus on the bundling with other streamers. I also would focus with partnerships, what I call bundle, with our traditional distribution partners, but also with non-traditional distribution partners. Before we launch now in Europe, we had a lot of bundles, which we negotiated with our traditional distributors.
Canal+ in France is only one of them. It's Telia in the Nordics, it's Allente, it's Altibox, it's many others, too. But we also bundle with non-traditional partners, like Nubank. Nubank is the biggest LatAm fintech. They claim they have something like 100 million clients, yeah? And we did a bundle deal with them in Latin America, and expect from us really going forwards with these partnerships because, as I said before, it's a better consumer experience when it is embedded in other products, when it's bundled. But that is besides our D2C offer, our retail offer, the second part of our distribution strategy.
So I think you're also alluding to the fact, in Europe, we've seen a lot of hard bundles, right?
Yes.
And so partnering with telco and
Exactly.
Yeah.
We're partnering with telcos, with video players, with pay TV, with broadband operators, all of that, and sometimes it's a hard bundle, sometimes it's a bundle, a hard bundle with some packages of them. Sometimes it's a soft bundle, what is much more of a marketing cooperation. In other, especially in Asia, we will have also content partnerships. So that is to get really the best product for our consumer, for our streaming subscribers. That's the goal of it.
So maybe zooming out a little bit. And I guess I asked you this already in a little bit of a different way. But when you feel like you're competing globally against some of these much larger streaming platforms like Netflix and even Amazon, do you feel like it's better to partner with more of your traditional peers, or are you open to different partnerships based on how the economics work out?
Look, Netflix has a 15-year experience with streaming, is a great company, and has the lead of this space, no doubt about that. Amazon, we have a lot of deals with Amazon. It's one of our launch partners in France. We will also have a deal with them in Spain, in Iberia, and maybe in other markets, too, going forward. So fine, but Amazon is not a pure streamer. They have different, if you subscribe to them, you have different benefits, additional benefits. We believe that if I really look at the whole landscape, we believe that in the end, the consumers will settle between three and five global streaming offers.
And we are really confident that we will be a top-three player. That's our goal. And not only a top-three players, but also profitable, yeah? You can't be a top-three player if you lose tens of billions of dollars. That's not our game. We want to be profitable, but in spite of that, being a top-three player. And I think we feel, as I said before, it's we're just beginning, yeah? And when you look at our content.
And David always says, "We have only one mission with our company. It's storytelling." Really, really to try and produce and create and distribute the best content. And when I look at our content we have, and we provide, I think we have a very, very good chance to be one of the top-three players globally.
So to reach that level of scale, I'm curious if we can shift to the monetization piece of it, right? And so, where we got really excited about when we first looked at Discovery's idea of launching Discovery+ internationally, was the revenue upside opportunity, given the limited penetration on the pay TV side, and really reaching this much larger universe that you're not speaking to and sharing those stories with regularly.
So how do we think about the monetization opportunity on a per-subscriber basis, if you wanna talk about ARPU, or how that compares to the linear pay TV revenue per subscriber that you're getting? Is that a big opportunity as you see this roll out?
I wouldn't say that only it depends on ARPU. ARPU is one of our three key metrics. ARPU, it's the number of subscribers, and it's the lifetime value of a subscriber. And that, these three metrics are, for us, key, and we are very rational and data-driven on that. To estimate what has to be the threshold of every single contract, the price point, in order to make a deal or not, to close the deal or not. So that's as a starting point. The second thing is, that's not only true for Discovery+.
When I talk about the distribution revenues of our combined linear and streaming offering - very clear, and very clear that we want to partly, even significantly, increase these revenues, going forward. ARPU is one important key metrics, but it's not the only one.
We hit on it a little bit before, but how critical is the ad tier launch internationally as part of that, especially in probably Latin America, as you were talking about before?
It's very important out of several reasons. First of all, it's a lower-cost entry point for the consumer, and but it's also attractive for our distributors, our wholesale distributors, because it's less costly and gives them the opportunity to an upsell to the consumer. So these are the two points, and third, not the last point; the last important point is that with our strong linear offering, especially in Europe, but not only in Europe, but in Latin America, we need to offer the advertisers both linear inventory and digital inventory.
And in the future, we will sell that together, and that's the reason why it's important, out of several reasons.
Okay, so the more that you scale internationally on the streaming side, I'm wondering how do you think, or have you today, and expect to, going forward, manage the balance of the cannibalization, right, of eating away at some of the linear revenues and cash flows that are obviously critically important to the company?
We don't call it cannibalization; we call it transition. And let's not—let's be clear: linear and streaming are two sides of the same coin. So important is to get this transition right, and yes, it's at a different speed, and it's advanced differently, this transition, but that we need to get right, and that is really the goal. It's not important where we get the revenues, yeah, but that we increase our revenues with this combined operation, yeah? Networks and streaming. That's the beauty of our product, and I believe that we have the advantage that we have both linear and streaming.
When I look and when I think about our negotiations with the distributors, none of them so far said, "We don't need linear, your linear product." Yeah, some have said, "We want, don't want to pay that much." I mean, that's the normal negotiation. But they want our linear product, too, and not only the streaming product, because consumers want to be both. Yes, we know more and more consumer watch more and more time on streaming, but this development is not binary. And in the years going forward, I'm 100% convinced we see we have a long way to go to have really both sides of the coin, linear and streaming.
That's really interesting because some of your peers have taken different approaches, where they've leaned all into streaming and actually gone as far as shutting down some of their international networks portfolio, so-
Especially in Asia and especially in Latin America, and when you talk with them today, I'm not so sure whether they come to the same conclusion, yeah. Because why, yeah? Yes, the moment the consumer don't want the linear offer anymore, why should we keep that? First of all, the distributors will tell us then we don't need that. And second, why should we not really go full in, yeah? But as long as the consumer want it, why should we give that up?
Especially given the advantage that you were talking about-
Yes
E arlier with the,
Especially in Europe.
O ver-the-air networks.
Yeah, especially in Europe.
Got it. All right, so maybe shifting gears a little bit in terms of the licensing of some of these rights. Clearly, there's a big existing contract in a lot of, or a couple of your key markets in the U.K. and Germany, with the HBO Sky output deal. I'm wondering if you can help us frame how you think about that decision going forward, whether to continue that relationship or have that relationship evolve to some sort of mix, as you're talking about right now, or do you go all in, in terms of the Max strategy and really look to build the scale?
Look, first of all, first comment: Sky was always a great partner for us, yeah, traditionally, and is still a great partner today. That's number one. But we want, we need, and we will launch Max in these three markets. These are three of the most important markets out of the U.S. There's no reason we should not do that, yeah? Why should we disadvantage ourselves in not launching Max in these three markets? That's number one. How and when? It's too early to say. There are a lot of discussions going on. We have time.
The contract with Sky ends in this calendar end of 2025, so no more details, wouldn't make any sense, yeah? But one thing is for sure, not only that we want to do that because we don't want to disadvantage ourselves, but second, we also know, we see it every single day, that this content is working. Every single day, we see the ratings for the Warner Bros. and the HBO content, which we sell to Sky. And I'm a Sky customer, for my London flat. Every single year, I get a letter, maybe during the pandemic it was every second year, a letter from the CEO of Sky explaining why I have to pay GBP 1 or GBP 2 more.
And in all the cases, at least in this, I think, eight years I'm a Sky customer, at least 50% of the justification were a product from Warner Bros. Discovery. So that's clear, our product is working there. And by the way, that doesn't mean that we won't have a relationship with Sky if they want. It just won't be only content licensing anymore.
So I'm wondering, taking that, how should we think about other markets and, and opportunities? Clearly, you, you've made some, I guess, different decisions in terms of licensing in India with, with HBO content there, ProSieben, with Warner Bros. content there. So maybe how do you balance where we are in terms of licensing versus going all in and, and launching in some of these other markets and regions?
Look, first of all, there are certain things when we have launched Max, which we don't sell on the streaming side. That's number one. But there's still we have so many, I think we have 45,000 hours to sell. Not everything, we need exclusively on, on Max. There's plenty of time also in the future, even if you launch, launched in every single market, to sell. So that's number one.
Number two, on the streaming side, and JB said that many, many, many times, if we believe that within a period of three-five years, we will be a top, and we have the chance to be a top- three player and being profitable, profitable, we want to launch, and we will launch Max. If we are not sure, and we come to the conclusion we either can't be a top -three player, so we don't have the scale, or we can't be profitable, then we probably will license into the markets. But from my point of view, when I see the landscape, I'm sure that this will be not, the last alternative will be not in a lot of markets all around the world.
Yeah. So the money that needs to be spent to generate all these stories is the programming budget, and I think the company has talked about roughly $20 billion of content spending. I'm wondering if you could maybe help us understand how much is allocated from an international-only perspective, right? So what I'm curious about is, given the amount of total spending from a company perspective, is there stuff or is there budget that's allocated more towards just local, or is it more from a global perspective? And is that like a competitive advantage that maybe gets underappreciated, given all the local content that-
Look, first of all, local content is hugely important. I don't think, and I say that everywhere where I am, you can't be globally successful if you don't have relevant local content. But because we are not, we have only launched in 50% of the addressable markets, the international percentage is lower now than it will be in the future. It's roughly around 20%, yeah? But with this definitely will be higher, when it comes, when it goes into the future, and we already have now, although we just started, a few really, really interesting successes with local content.
I mean, in Europe, we will launch not only with House of the Dragon and only with the Olympics, we will launch with 4,500 local hours, yeah? When we launch in May on the service. So that's a difference. It's the robust content of what we have. In Latin America, we not only have our Warner Bros. feature films, we have a deal with NBCUniversal, we have a deal with Sony, we have our Warner Bros. series. We have, of course, Big Frenzy and Friends, which we won't sell in a market where we have Max on the streaming service, and we have sports, yeah. Sports is hugely important in Latin America and in Europe for us.
That's where I want to go next. So, you mentioned the Olympics, Paris coming up. How do we think about the overall strategy for sports as part of the international content spending? Again, is that something that can be a differentiated asset for you, given the rights that you currently have or continue to expect to grow?
First of all, we have quite a lot of sports assets. In Latin America, I start with Latin America, we have two local leagues, in Argentina, 50% of the local league. We have 100% of the Chilean league. We have the Champions League in Brazil and Mexico. We have Paulista, that is the state of São Paulo conference, and that's working. It's not only working for linear, it's also working for streaming. The semi-final game of Real Madrid against Manchester City had 1.239 . This number will be in my head. 1.239 million viewers in Latin America, although it's only in Brazil and Mexico, you could launch it.
So that's hugely important. In Europe, we have Eurosport, yeah, with a focus of tennis, cycling, winter sports, and we have in the U.K., 50% of TNT Sports. We bought it from BT, with the Champions League, with a weekly game of EPL with rugby, all of it with the FA Cup now in the U.K. That's huge, and we have a path to control that, yeah? So sports for us is important. We will experiment, what is on both sides, linear and streaming. We have experiments when we go only exclusive on Max to see. So that is great for us, but there's one but: we are disciplined when it comes to our sports rights, yeah?
It's not that we spend whatever it costs. It's a very disciplined approach, and that's also how we renewed our Olympics contracts with the Olympic Committee. From 2026 - 2032, we bid only, and we only have the pay TV and streaming rights, and the linear rights are with the EBU, yeah. I think that's the perfect split.
That's a great way of kind of bringing it all together. So maybe as we end our time here, and appreciate you being here and giving us the full overview that you did, as we think about the next three to five years for Warner Bros. Discovery internationally, anything that we should expect that, you know, might not be on our radar screen or any other kind of surprises or how you think the shape of the growth is gonna go, given, again, it's not something that we're as close to, given the geography?
It's interesting because, when we had our international offsite a few weeks ago, that was exactly what I asked my team, and that we ended up with four points where we want to be in three-five years. Number one, Max in almost all of the markets in the world, really being a global product. Number two, still a very strong linear offer. We believe that this will be the case. Third, lots more of local content, relevant local content.
And fourth, and that's not only the aspirational part of it, it's also what we really believe: a meaningful, a significant higher profit when you combine streaming and networks, the results of streaming networks together in the international markets. These are the four points I would name, and it's not only mine, it's really from my whole team.
Great place to leave it. So really appreciate you coming. Thank you to the guys, and,
Thank you.
Have a good day.
Thanks for having me.