HBO is taking a couple of cues from Netflix by ramping up production of original shows and accelerating its international expansion, parent company Time Warner announced on its Q4 2015 earnings call last week.
This chart from Statista shows why. Although HBO is still way ahead of Netflix in terms of worldwide subscribers, it's fallen behind in annual subscription revenue. Meanwhile, Netflix isn't standing still: its content chief Ted Sarandos recently said that the company's"goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us."
Statista