HBO launches service for Portugal

Game of Thrones

HBO has launched a dedicated service for Portugal, giving audiences in the country access to full seasons of HBO and third-party shows, movies, documentaries and family content.

HBO has struck a deal with Vodafone to distribute its service to TV customers, making the company the exclusive service provider partner for the streaming offering in the country.

The service, which is also available on the web at hboportugal.com, can be accessed via smartphones, tablets and devices including PC, LG TV, PlayStation 4, Android TV, Chromecast and Apple TV.

HBO Portugal will include access to over 4,500 episodes of content including all seasons of HBO Originals such as Game of Thrones, True Detective, Westworld and Big Little Lies, library series like Sex and the City, The Sopranos, The Wire and Girls, and series from other content providers such as Patrick Melrose from Sky/Showtime, A Discovery of Witches from Sky/ Sundance TV, Krypton and Deadly Class from SyFy, Legacies and Charmed from CW and Killing Eve from BBC America/AMC.

HBO is providing a one-month free trial for all new subscribers, and the service will have a monthly cost of €4.99, allowing subscribers to register five different devices and watch two simultaneous streams of dubbed and subtitled content.

HBO has been been present in the Portuguese market since 2015 through a partnership with pay TV operator NOS, with its content distributed on NOS’s TV Cine & Séries channels. Following reports last year that HBO was mulling an OTT launch in the country, NOS told local press that was “reviewing the scope” of its partnership with the US outfit.

Vodafone is making the service available free for three months to all new TV subscribers, while some of the operator’s TVNetVoz and TVNetVoz + Mobile packages will include HBO Portugal for 24 months.

The service provider is also launching a 360° marketing effort with the tagline ‘HBO Portugal is on Vodafone TV’ and a TV ad campaign featuring ators Ana Guiomar and Diogo Valsassina.

Mário Vaz, CEO of Vodafone Portugal said that the partnership with HBO was “a source of great pride”. He said that the deal “reinforces one of Vodafone’s main objectives: to give our customers what we know they want to see, with the best television experience powered by the best telecommunications network in the market”.

Vodafone has a close relationship with HBO in neighbouring Spain, where Vodafone España was the exclusive distributor of the SVOD service when it launched in the country in 2016. More recently, the operator began offering a selection of HBO España content to its converged and mobile contract customers within a dedicated section of its Videoclub on-demand service.

Separately, HBO Europe has green-lit 30 Coins (30 monedas), an original eight-episode Spanish horror series directed by Álex de la Iglesia and co-written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría. Produced by Pokeepsie Films, 30 Coins will shoot this year in Spain. The series is an HBO Europe original production.