HBO Max is making paying subscribers watch AI casino slop

HBO Max gave us The Sopranos, Succession, and The Last of Us. Now, if you subscribe to its cheapest plan, it may also give you an AI-generated ad in which a woman who cannot afford baby formula is told to start gambling and conveniently wins the money she needs.

For months, HBO Max users have been complaining about cheap-looking casino ads that appear in practically every commercial break, sometimes several in a row. The actors look fake, the stories are absurd, and the underlying message is often downright grim: can’t afford baby formula? Try your luck at online slots. Some users have even contacted HBO Max support about the ads. One said the only response they received was that their complaint would be “taken into consideration.”

The complaints are mostly scattered across Reddit and X, and HBO Max has not publicly addressed this particular wave of ads. But the same shady-sounding names and patterns keep coming up: Chumba Casino, Lavish Luck, Jackpot Go, Gleaming Slots, endless repetition, questionable “actors”, and increasingly furious subscribers.

A note on terminology
Many of the advertised services call themselves sweepstakes or social casinos rather than conventional online casinos. A traditional social casino lets users play casino-style games with virtual currency that cannot be cashed out. A sweepstakes casino adds a second currency that can be obtained for free and redeemed for cash or prizes, then relies on the “no purchase necessary” model to argue that it is running a promotional sweepstakes rather than real-money gambling. Not all US regulators find that distinction convincing. To regular viewers, however, these services still look and behave much like online casinos, so that is what we will call them here.

This may be the most depressing version of ad-supported streaming yet. You can try blocking the ads in a desktop browser or filtering their domains with AdGuard DNS or another network-level filtering tool, but if they are stitched directly into the video stream, even that may fail, leaving you with the industry’s preferred solution: pay even more.

HBO Max had a casino-ad problem before the AI slop

Before the fake faces and TikTok-style scripts arrived, HBO Max subscribers were already being subjected to the same casino ads again and again. AI did not create the problem, it just made it cheaper, creepier, and much harder to ignore.

Back in December 2024, one Reddit user reported seeing the same Chumba Casino commercial four or five times in a row on HBO Max. A commenter described the experience as “a legally recognized form of torture,” which sounds dramatic until you imagine a popular TV host telling you to play shady-looking casino-type game for the fifth consecutive time.

By 2026, the ads had apparently multiplied and become much worse. In January, one HBO Max subscriber complained about being repeatedly shown “low brow” slot-machine app ads. The viewer said they struggled with gambling addiction and found the commercials even worse than regular sports-betting ads. Other people in the thread compared HBO Max to a pirate streaming site, complained that the ads made watching anything with their families “unbearable,” and said they were ready to cancel their subscriptions.

In April, another user said HBO Max was constantly showing them TikTok-style Jackpot Go commercials featuring actors who appeared to be generated by AI. “It feels so sinister,” one commenter wrote. Another called the ads “brain rot in an ad.” One subscriber said he was stuck with the casino ads because their carrier-provided HBO Max plan could not be upgraded.

Gleaming Slots appears to be an even more determined advertiser. In August, one subscriber estimated that Gleaming Slots accounted for “9 times out of 10” of the ads they saw between shows and movies. Other users complained that the ads looked especially ridiculous when inserted into classic HBO programming.

You are still paying for HBO Max, by the way

Viewers keep describing the same familiar scenario: unnatural faces and voices, strange pacing, generic backgrounds, and dozens of nearly identical variations on the same terrible script. Such advertising would feel cheap anywhere. On HBO Max, it looks almost surreal.

Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO Max’s parent company, describes the streaming service as a “premier global streaming platform”, built around brands such as HBO, Warner Bros., DC, and Harry Potter. It also boasts sophisticated contextual targeting that can match commercials to particular scenes, moods, and themes. Yet judging by what some viewers actually see, HBO Max has settled on one universal mood: “please spend your money at an online casino.”

HBO Max acknowledges that one brand may appear more frequently during a particular series, movie, or genre. Its US help page currently tells Basic with Ads subscribers to expect about six minutes of advertising per hour. It was not always like that, though. When the ad-supported plan launched in 2021, HBO Max promised no more than four minutes of ads per hour — and said HBO programming itself would not be interrupted. By June 2025, it had quietly changed to six. That is a 50% increase, and the old promise to leave HBO shows alone has also disappeared.

None of this is particularly surprising really. It is exactly where ad-supported streaming has been heading.

When Netflix introduced its advertising plan back in 2022, we called it the end of streaming’s ad-free golden era. When Amazon inserted ads into Prime Video subscriptions by default, we asked whether ad-free streaming was becoming doomed. We have also written about the industry’s now-familiar strategy: launch a cheaper ad-supported plan, make the ad-free option progressively more expensive, and slowly worsen the experience for everyone who refuses to upgrade.

The HBO Max casino situation is one of the most extreme interpretations of this model. The customer pays for the service, but the cheaper tier becomes a dumping ground for repetitive ads of whatever quality the platform is willing to stoop to. When the experience becomes unbearable, the official solution is simple: pay HBO Max more money. And HBO Max is not alone in feeding its subscribers casino-themed AI slop.

Tubi viewers say they receive one or two AI casino ads in practically every break. Some claim that four or five commercials out of a seven-ad break promote casino apps. The same discussion mentions similar ads appearing on Discovery+, Hulu, Paramount+, and Peacock. Sling users have also complained about non-stop, repetitive casino-app commercials and discussed leaving the service because of them.

The casino ads themselves may still be a niche problem, but the growth of streaming advertising is not. Ampere Analysis data reported by Business Insider shows that US streaming ad loads rose 18% between January and August 2026.

The real cost of “premium” streaming

More ad time means more space that platforms need to fill — and, apparently, lower standards for what gets approved. The consequences for viewers go beyond just mere frustration: casino ads can reach people struggling with gambling addiction and families with kids who never expected to have online slots inserted into movie night.

A child does not need their own HBO Max account to see these ads; watching through a parent’s profile on the family TV is enough. This becomes particularly awkward with the new Harry Potter series arriving at Christmas 2026. HBO Max confirms that ads can appear around kids and family content and says these breaks have bumpers indicating when the advertising starts and when the program resumes. A cheerful bumper does not make an 18+ gambling pitch family-friendly, though.

This is where “premium” streaming appears to be heading: more ads, worse ads, followed by a higher monthly fee if you want to escape.

Can AdGuard block HBO Max ads?

One Reddit discussion eventually arrived at the obvious question: can an ad blocker remove these ads on a computer or Smart TV?

We would love to say that installing AdGuard will make every HBO Max ad disappear on every device forever. Unfortunately, streaming advertising is more complicated than that. The real answer is: sometimes. It depends on the device and on how HBO Max delivers the ad.

If you watch HBO Max in a desktop browser

This is where you have the best chance of blocking the ads.

AdGuard for Windows, AdGuard for Mac, and the AdGuard Browser Extension can filter the web requests and page elements used by streaming services. As we have explained before, our desktop apps and browser extension can block a good portion of streaming ads when the video is played in a browser.

Keeping AdGuard and its filters updated helps. So does reporting missed ads, since those reports allow filtering rules to be adjusted.

If you watch through a mobile or TV app

Things get much harder inside streaming apps.

AdGuard for Android may block some separate advertising and tracking requests, but it has less control over ads embedded in protected video streams. On iOS, system restrictions make filtering inside apps even more limited.

AdGuard for Android TV can block many ordinary ad and tracking domains, but it cannot filter HTTPS traffic in the same way as our desktop apps. As a result, complex in-stream advertising may remain.

If you watch on a Smart TV, Apple TV, or console

AdGuard DNS — both public and personal — and AdGuard Home can block requests to known advertising and tracking domains across an entire network. They can be configured on many Smart TVs, streaming devices, consoles, or directly on a router.

But DNS filtering has a limitation: it can block a domain, not surgically remove one part of an encrypted video stream.

If HBO Max loads an ad from a separate advertising domain, DNS filtering may be able to stop it. If the commercial comes from the same domain as the show — or is inserted into the video on the server side — blocking the relevant domain may also stop the show itself.

In the Reddit discussion, one user claimed to have removed HBO Max ads on Apple TV by using a custom DNS blocklist and inspecting network logs. That suggests at least some HBO Max ads may be delivered separately on some devices. It is not, however, a universal one-click solution. The relevant domains may differ by device and region, can change over time, and may also be necessary for video playback.