At & T’s latest subscriber figures make it seem like HBO and its sister service HBO Max are doing well. In a regulatory filing this week, it revealed that it beat its projected year-end goal with 73.8 million subscribers between HBO and HBO Max.

The win comes after a year of highly anticipated movie debuts. It’s still tens of millions of subscribers behind rivals like Disney plus and Netflix.

At & T’s figures conflate two separate services – HBO, its cable business, and HBO Max, its streaming service. warnermedia spokesperson Jaclyn Mandelbaum said more information’will be broken out in a couple weeks’.

Hbo Max added a lower-priced tier and launched internationally partway through the year. Both titles like dune, the matrix resurrections, and the third season of succession should have helped boost its subscribers.

Disney plus added more than twice as many subscribers over a similar time period. Hbo Max reported 118.1 million paid subscribers as of October 2021. Hbo’s 73.8 million record is only up from 61 million subscribers globally at the end of 2020.

Piracy, account-sharing, and features like auto-play can significantly skew a truly accurate picture of subscriber and title success.