HBO (international)

HBO (Home Box Office), which was originally established as a premium cable television channel in the United States, has expanded worldwide. Since 1991, HBO has overseen a number of partnerships that operate HBO-branded television networks around the world. As HBO was launched in new markets, the brand has been used in several countries.

While in some countries, it operates using a subscription-based model akin to that of the U.S. service, in others it is offered as a basic cable channel. Although HBO has the right to distribute its original programs for broadcast in other countries, the terms of its licensing agreements with film studios only retains it the right to broadcast them within the United States and the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, therefore film rights for the international channels must be licensed separately.

This article focuses on other HBO channels outside of the United States, including channels that do not carry the HBO branding to which the channel has major program distribution agreements. Eventually, there will be brief histories on each of the international channels, describing any regionally available programming and each service's development.

HBO Brazil was launched in 1991 as a partnership between Televisão Abril, Time Warner and Sony. It was developed as an analogue pay channel, but used UHF broadcast frequencies and ran its programming for nine hours each day. After the Brazilian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Televisão Abril sold its share in the service to Time Warner.

HBO Canada was launched on October 30, 2008 as a multiplex channel of the Canadian movie services Movie Central and The Movie Network. The channel was created as a joint venture between The Movie Network's then-owner Astral Media – whose distribution rights to HBO Canada in Eastern Canada were assumed by Bell Media when it acquired Astral in a 2013 takeover – and Movie Central's owner Corus Entertainment, which distributes the channel in Western Canada. Outside of the required brand licensing by Bell and Corus to use the HBO trademarks and logo, Time Warner does not hold an ownership interest in HBO Canada, either whole or partial. The channel carries HBO's original programming (though some programs that air in the United States on HBO's rival Showtime are also featured on the network, through rights agreements between TMN and Movie Central with both U.S. pay channels). It also airs a selection of Canadian films and series to satisfy Canadian content requirements.

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