Warner Bros. and Disney have been fierce rivals for decades. But like other entertainment companies, they both struggled to prevent customers from canceling their streaming subscriptions. So their executives hatched an unusual plan.
A couple of years ago, the companies decided to offer their streaming services — Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max and Disney’s Hulu and Disney+ — as a bundle. They priced the package lower than the cost of subscribing to each platform individually.
The cancellation numbers for the package, known in the industry as churn, fell so much that the executives did a “double take,” said David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery.
“It was as close to a solve as you’re going to have,” Mr. Zaslav said in a recent interview. “If you can bundle with a compelling service, as we did with Hulu and Disney, it’s a dramatic reduction in churn.”
The rest of the industry took notice. Other streaming companies have increasingly linked arms, and consumers have shown a growing appetite for the resulting packages.
For viewers, the combinations can lower costs. Apple TV and Peacock plans without commercials cost a combined $30 a month when sold separately. The bundled version of the services is $20 a month.
Two years ago, only 10 percent of every new subscription for a major streaming service was for a bundled offering, according to Antenna, a media research firm. Now, bundles account for a third of all new subscriptions, and 28 percent of all subscriptions, double the share in 2024.
The offerings are growing at a similar pace. Since the beginning of last year, 30 new bundled packages have hit the market, Antenna said. They include an alliance between Apple TV and Peacock, and one between Fox One and ESPN. Smaller streamers have taken to the trend in droves: AMC+ joined with Hallmark+, and MGM+ linked up with BritBox.
The growth of bundles is the latest sign that television’s digital future is being built using the blueprint of its cable past. Nearly every streamer now carries live sporting events and commercials. Streaming executives have rediscovered their affinity for meat-and-potato medical dramas, like “The Pitt” on HBO Max. And now their services are being sold together once again.
“Bundles were an experiment and very much on the fringe two years ago,” said Jonathan Carson, the chief executive of Antenna. “Now they’re a core part of the streaming industry.”
For now, no major entertainment company seems eager to abandon the stand-alone storefront entirely. Netflix, by far the country’s most popular paid streaming service, has not teamed up with any other streamer. And nearly every company, including those that have embraced bundles, still finds the prospect of working hand in hand with a rival an operational headache.
Still, the partnerships have reshaped relationships among many entertainment companies. Amazon and Roku, for example, are trying to persuade subscribers to sign up for multiple streaming services through a single provider, where they can hopscotch from one streamer to the next using the same interface. YouTube TV is now selling so-called skinny bundles of cable channels broken into categories like sports or news. Cable companies like Charter are bundling Paramount+ and Hulu with cable and video entertainment offerings.
The companies are all trying to address the propensity of consumers to switch from one subscription to the next, a creation of the streaming era. Cancellations among nearly all services surged in recent years, culminating in their highest levels two years ago, according to Antenna.
“The old business, the cable business, it was very hard to cancel,” Mr. Zaslav said.
Now all it takes is one click to dump a service, and users have become more likely to do so. Robert Schildhouse, the chief executive of the direct-to-consumer division of BBC Studios, which owns BritBox, compared the streaming business to a “leaky bucket.”
“Everyone talks about growth, but growth doesn’t even start until you can replace the subscribers that you’ve lost,” he said in an interview.
Mr. Schildhouse said BritBox, which has a wide variety of British TV series, had tried several bundles. “Our job is to create accessible on-ramps, to give people a reason to give us a try,” he said. “We do that through content, and we can also do that with partnerships with other streamers who can help us bring BritBox into the living room.”
Companies usually look for a bundle partner that can offer something different. Take the Apple TV and Peacock combination: Apple TV offers premium original scripted programs like “Slow Horses” and “Severance,” while Peacock has live sports and unscripted reality shows from Bravo. Their bundle launched in October, and “it’s a really nice complementary pairing,” said Matt Schnaars, the president of platform distribution and partnerships at NBCUniversal, which owns Peacock.
Amazon has been particularly aggressive in pushing for bundles. On Prime Video, its subscriptions channel, the company has encouraged some streamers to pair up, particularly over the last year when the company “significantly increased the volume of bundles,” said Ryan Pirozzi, the head of the channels division for Prime Video.
“Certainly bundles very quickly were proven to be a retention driver, or a churn reducer,” he said. “That’s what every partner’s looking for.”
And late last year, when Amazon brought together three streamers owned by three different companies — AMC+, Starz and MGM+ — Mr. Pirozzi’s team came up with a new nickname: a trundle.
“There’s going to be a four-bundle eventually,” he said.
