(Reuters) - Warner Bros Discovery ( WBD ) posted a surprise third-quarter profit on Thursday as the Paris Olympics powered streaming subscriber growth and cable revenue, making up for a lack of major box office hits from its studio.

Shares of the company rose 3.7% in premarket trading.

The company's Max streaming platform expanded into Europe weeks before the Olympic Games with exclusive rights to stream the highly anticipated sporting event, boosting subscribers.

The streaming segment, which includes the Max and Discovery+ services, added 7.2 million direct-to-consumer subscribers in the third quarter, beating estimates for 6.28 million additions, according to data compiled by Visible Alpha.

Max delivered its strongest quarterly subscriber gain since the platform's launch, CEO David Zaslav said in a statement.

The streaming segment's adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization more than doubled from a year earlier to $289 million.

Revenue at the TV networks division, which includes Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and Food Network, rose 3% to $5.01 billion, primarily driven by sublicensing of Olympic sports rights to regional broadcast networks throughout Europe.

The company has been grappling with an industry-wide decline in the traditional TV business as more subscribers shift to streaming.

Warner Bros Discovery ( WBD ) reported a surprise profit of 5 cents per share, while analysts had expected a loss of 9 cents, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Revenue at its studio segment fell 17%. That dragged down total revenue to $9.62 billion for the three months ended Sept. 30, below estimates of $9.80 billion.

With releases such as "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" in the July-September quarter, Warner Bros Discovery's ( WBD ) studio division has struggled to repeat last year's explosive success of Margot Robbie-starrer "Barbie", the highest grossing film of 2023.

(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Devika Syamnath)