On Wednesday evening, The Wall Street Journal reported that DirecTV's contract with HBO includes wording that could punish the channel if its Web streaming-only service gets too popular.

This past October, HBO announced that in 2015 it will offer a stand-alone service like HBO Go that customers can buy without buying a traditional TV bundle. But little is known about what the service will look like and how HBO is planning to pacify the pay-TV providers that bring in most of its business.

According to “people familiar with the matter,” however, DirecTV's contract with HBO stipulates that if HBO “signs up more than 450,000 subscribers nationally for the 'over-the-top' online service, or 300,000 in any given local market,” then DirecTV has the right to scale back its marketing of HBO. The source also told the WSJ that hitting those subscriber numbers would give DirecTV the right to sell HBO's streaming service through its own billing department as well.

”It isn’t clear whether DirecTV, which has 20 million subscribers, would be able to cut the price it pays for carrying HBO, which is owned by Time Warner Inc,” the WSJ reports. The paper also notes that the contract in question was negotiated before HBO announced its plans to offer a streaming-only service and will be up for renegotiation in 2015 when HBO launches the service.

DirecTV, for one, is shrugging off the details of yesterday's report. A spokesperson for the company told Ars via e-mail, “we don’t comment on programming contracts or speculative stories.”

Still, there's little doubt that HBO has a fine line to walk between being able to capture the growing cord-cutters' market and keeping the pay-TV providers from feeling like HBO is eating their lunch. HBO depends on providers like DirecTV to market its channel to new subscribers and to handle billing and customer service.

At the same time, HBO is quite valuable for pay-TV providers. Last week HBO CEO Richard Plepler told an audience at the Paley Center for Media that the streaming-only service won't affect cable companies making less than $15 per month for HBO. That means that while a price for HBO's new service isn't known yet, it will likely be around $15 or more—a subscription price that Netflix leaves in the dust. But the price point may be a good move for HBO early in its growth— it would capture that audience that will pay a premium for the content and keep companies like DirecTV happy.