The Cultural Bonus initiative rewards young people who turn 18 with an aid of 400 euros, trying to encourage them to have money to spend on culture without having to come out of their own pocket. Of these, up to 100 euros can be used to pay for subscriptions to streaming platforms. Is HBO Max one of them?
We are going to review the conditions and limitations of the Cultural Bonus as a means of payment for subscriptions to streaming platforms such as HBO Max.
Cultural Bonus and streaming platforms
The Cultural Bonus of 400 euros is one of the great measures that the Government of Pedro Sánchez has implemented so that young people who turned 18 in 2022 and those who have done so or will do so in 2023 have money than investing in culture.
This is distributed in various ways, having a budget assigned for each type of cultural representation. The Bonus is divided into three sections to promote access to different cultural expressions:
- 200 euros for live arts, cultural heritage and audiovisual arts. For example, tickets and passes for performing arts, live music, cinema, museums, libraries, exhibitions and performing, literary, musical or audiovisual festivals.
- 100 euros for cultural products in physical format. For example, books, magazines, newspapers, or other periodical publications; video games, sheet music, records, CD, DVD or Blu-ray.
- 100 euros for digital or online consumption. For example, subscriptions and rentals to music, reading or audio-reading, or audiovisual platforms, purchase of audiobooks, purchase of digital books (e-books), subscription to download multimedia files (podcasts), subscriptions to online video games, digital subscriptions to press, magazines or other periodical publications.
It is with these last 100 euros that we can subscribe to audiovisual or streaming platforms, being able to use the Correos gift card into which the aid money is deposited. However, there are a number of conditions for this. The first and most important is that «subscriptions to audio or video platforms are limited to four months for each of them. After those four months, the subscription will be cancelled. Thus, although HBO Max costs 9.99 euros per month, you could not subscribe for 10 months to use up those 100 euros budgeted.
Youth Cultural Bonus
@BonoCultural
If you turn 18 this year, you have the #BonoCulturalJoven!
And a lot of #culture to enjoy: theatre, cinema, museums, books, shows, music, movies and online series…🎭🎞️🏛️📚📰🎤💃🎶
🚨 Apply before September 30 at: https://t.co/wfh9EU2Fru
€400 goes a long way! https://t.co/hJJIP8TXIa
September 8, 2023 • 10:27
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The second is that the Cultural Bonus payment card can be used to purchase gift cards that can be exchanged as credit for collaborating streaming platforms, allowing some to directly enter the Correos card number that you receive as a means of payment.
HBO Max is not possible
HBO Max does not currently offer gift cards or promotional codes that can be purchased and used to pay for the subscription on its platform. Therefore, it is not possible to use the youth cultural bonus to pay for the HBO Max subscription. Unfortunately, HBO Max Spain does not accept aid as a direct form of payment either, as we can see if we search for “HBO” in the list of participating entities, where some of its competitors such as Disney or Netflix do appear.
The youth cultural voucher can only be used to acquire cultural goods and services that are within the catalog of establishments that accept this voucher in Spain. This includes the purchase of books, tickets to museums, concerts and other cultural activities, but cannot be used to directly pay for online subscription services such as HBO Max. However, you can subscribe to other streaming platforms that do have their subscriptions for sale in the form of gift cards, such as Netflix, Spotify or DAZN.
