Following the launch of Warner Bros Discovery’s streamer Max in Poland, where it already operates multiple broadcast and FAST channels and two other streaming offerings, Maciej Gozdowski has quickly become one of the most important execs in the CEE region.

Maciej Gozdowski

June 12 saw the much-anticipated launch of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD)’s Max streaming service in Poland, bringing the new platform to its 25th European country across Iberia, Benelux, the Nordics and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and its 65th territory globally.

The move coincided with the premiere of House of the Dragon season two and precedes the launch of content including The Penguin, Dune: Prophecy and films such as Dune: Part Two, Barbie, Wonka and major DC Universe titles. HBO originals already screening on Max include The Last of Us, Succession, The White Lotus, Euphoria and True Detective, alongside US comedy classics like Friends and The Big Bang Theory.

WBD has said Max is also committed to local content. Polish originals include The Convict’s final season, The Thaw S2 and new releases such as The Easterngate, Lady Love and various documentaries.

The US studio has a long-standing linear presence in the territory through the TVN networks, which it inherited first from Scripps and then Discovery after a series of escalating mergers, and it is maintaining its two other local streaming services – Player and news service TVN24 – alongside Max rather than amalgamating them.

All this means it has been a hectic summer for Maciej Gozdowski, group VP of streaming at Warner Bros Discovery Poland, who oversaw that launch in his home country while also battling pneumonia in the build-up to the big day.

“Max is going to be a game-changer in Poland,” Gozdowski says. “Max is going to have twice the content HBO Max had and, at the same time, something quite unique in EMEA – it will also have 25 years of the library from TVN, which is a very established brand in Poland. Our strategy is to integrate the best content locally, and globally, in one place – series, movies and entertainment, but also sports, news and live channels. It’s hard to find other services around the world that carry all those things and aggregate them in one place.”

Obviously much of the interest for a well-established production community in and around Warsaw is the opportunity to showcase their originals on the new platform. “We will continue what we have been doing here on both HBO Max and Player – that’s at least six original local series premiering every year on Max, six documentaries and a few entertainment shows,” Gozdowski says.

“Sometimes it will be a renewal and continuation of a series we already have, and at the same time we’re looking for the new great series that will be relevant to the local audience. We’ve been commissioning here for 20 years, so we know how to do it and we do it really well. We’re looking for drama, for sure, and we already have more than 20 productions in progress.

“That’s from a series perspective, but we also believe in entertainment and let’s call them ‘bikini realities,’ which TVN is very good at. We will carry extra versions, extended versions and spin-offs from those TVN7 shows on Max. We have three of these bikini reality series on our desk at the moment for Max, including Hotel Paradise which will continue its run there having previously been on Player and TVN7.

“We’re also looking for great documentaries. Some of these will [be sourced internally], because we have the news channel and general entertainment channels that are very popular in Poland and so our capabilities in that area are huge. We have a lot of stories we’d like to show to our audience.

“If you ask for budgets, I can’t share them with you, but it’s a really huge one.”

Hotel Paradise joined Max from Player and TVN7

Explaining the decision to maintain three streaming services in the territory as opposed to just whacking them all together on Max, Gozdowski says Player will now become more of a catch-up service, with all originals premiering first and foremost on Max.

Of course, linear broadcasters the world over are battling an exodus of audiences and advertisers to digital just as inflationary pressures drive their costs up, but the broad approach of WBD in Poland makes Gozdowski confident it can weather that storm.

“The general view is that inflation is now going down, which would be good, or it’s at least stable, which is not bad,” he says. “Of course, in advertising there is a shift to digital, but we are well represented in digital. We have enough digital inventory to also take this money that has been moved from linear TV to online.

“It’s also less severe here than in the US where there has been, say, a 20% drop. Here it’s more like a 2% drop. We have the number-one commercial TV network in Poland, with a huge percentage difference to the second place one, so it is easier to attract what advertisers there are when you’re number one. We also get super results for our news channel, where some days it even out-rates entertainment channels.

“So we are in a quite comfortable situation. I don’t want to say we don’t see the challenges that we have every day in front of us, but we are investing heavily in maintaining our number-one status on linear TV and investing in building inventory on the digital side because this is the future of advertising money.

“We are seeing the challenges presented by the changing behaviour of viewers; it’s not easy-peasy to deal with but we have the strategy and a lot of ideas to make sure we don’t lose position.”

In Poland, it seems the main challenges for WBD lie elsewhere – firstly, with the country’s regulator, KRRiT.

Channels such as news operation TVN24 have previously experienced delays in licence renewal. TVN Style has found itself in the same predicament, with the US ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, becoming involved in May when he criticised the regulator for dragging its heels on the issue.

TVN said at the time: “The failure to extend the licence for TVN Style and the comments of the head of KRRiT are another unlawful attack on the American investor and the values that unite our countries.”

Brzezinski went further, adding: “Anything that undermines faith in the predictability of the investment climate in Poland, such as yesterday’s statement by KRRiT questioning the legitimacy of an American company operating in Poland, undermines our common values, bilateral interests and the rule of law.”

New Polish original drama Lady Love

TVN Style has since had its licence extended, a WBD representative confirmed to CEE21.com. But, commenting on the matter, Gozdowski says: “The trouble is we don’t have a stable or predictable environment when it should be predictable. If somebody has a better idea, better content, more money, then great, we’ll figure it out. It’s like in football where you’ve invested well, you have the best players, you’ve prepared well, then somebody kicks you out of the game and you get a yellow card, so you complain and then you get a red card.”

The second challenge comes from piracy.

“Piracy in Poland is huge,” Gozdowski says. “It’s one of the biggest problems we have. You can’t monetise your content properly if 20 to 30% of the revenue disappears straight away because somebody was able to watch it somewhere else for free.

“I truly believe something has been done in Germany that should be followed here. There they have a common understanding of the piracy problem across the board – the broadband operators, the producers and the legislators. They don’t stop you from doing it. If you want to steal content go ahead, but the penalty will be immediate and it will be huge.

“A lot of people who move from Poland to Germany start using the same piracy methods they used in Poland, but then they immediately receive a penalty notice for €500 from the government. The government has an agreement with broadcasters and internet service providers.”

Pirates and pesky regulators aside, it’s an exciting time for WBD as Max rolls out in Poland and beyond. The local market will now wait to see if promises of multiple originals in scripted, factual and entertainment come to fruition, or if Max is simply there to bring a Western library to an Eastern audience.

Gozdowski is sure to remain busy.