{"id":22604,"date":"2025-08-30T18:34:48","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T18:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22604"},"modified":"2025-08-30T18:34:48","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T18:34:48","slug":"how-the-streamers-stacked-up-midyear-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22604","title":{"rendered":"How the streamers stacked up, midyear edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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Breakups are happening left and right.<\/p>\n

No, not the romantic kind: Several companies that operate streamers, e.g., NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery, are separating their linear and streaming assets.<\/p>\n

This year, streamers are navigating splits alongside tough macroeconomic conditions, and they continue to battle it out over live sports rights as they face the ongoing challenge ofgrowing saturation. After the summer earnings season, Marketing Brew took a mid-year look at the state of the major streamers and their parent companies.<\/p>\n

Full steam a-red:<\/strong> Netflix had a stellar Q2. Its revenue in the US and Canada grew 15% year over year, according to the streamer\u2019s Q2 earnings call in July, and executives upped full-year revenue guidance to about $45 billion.<\/p>\n

Its ad tier saw similar success: Netflix\u2019s upfront is officially complete, the company announced earlier this month, and it more than doubled US ad commitments. As its ad-supported tier grows, the streamer is also building out its ad tech, including an integration with Yahoo DSP that was first announced at Cannes Lions in June.<\/p>\n

Netflix viewers spent more than 95 billion hours streaming programming in the first half of 2025, according to the Q2 earnings release, and in an effort to make content more discoverable, the streamer updated its homepage in May.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Netflix\u2019s content strategy promises a focus on live content, particularly on sports. In July, Netflix livestreamed WWE SmackDown<\/em> and the Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano boxing match concurrently, and it\u2019s also got two NFL Christmas games in the pipeline.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at our current capabilities around live, we are in just a completely different place today compared to when we first started,\u201d Greg Peters, company co-CEO, told investors.<\/p>\n

While Netflix stopped regularly reporting subscriber numbers this year, it last reported 302 million subscribers overall at the end of 2024, and in May, it said it had 94 million monthly active users on its ad-supported tier.<\/p>\n

Big bird:<\/strong> Peacock struggled to take flight in Q2, with subscriber count flat at 41 million from the prior quarter. It\u2019s still losing money, but it decreased its losses to $101 million (compared to $348 million in the same period last year), according to its Q2 earnings call. Perhaps to help cut its losses, Peacock hiked prices on its Premium Monthly and Premium Plus Monthly tiers in July.<\/p>\n

There were some bright spots. Peacock grew its revenue 18% in the quarter to $1.2 billion, and about a third of NBCU\u2019s upfront commitments were tied to Peacock, the company said. That\u2019s partly due to the wide roster of live sports content it has coming up, like NBA games, the FIFA World Cup, the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, and the Super Bowl, the company said.<\/p>\n

Mouse house:<\/strong> Disney streamer Hulu will get folded into Disney+ next year, despite both streamers contributing to growth in Disney\u2019s DTC division, which saw a 6% bump in revenue in the quarter. The merger announcement came as Disney forecast that both Disney+ and Hulu would add around 10 million subscribers in Q4, mostly due to Hulu. Disney will follow Netflix\u2019s lead and stop reporting streaming subscriber data each quarter, but its last reported subscriber count was 128 million for core Disney+ subscribers, 55.5 million Hulu subscribers, and 24 million ESPN+ subscribers as of August.<\/p>\n

Domestic average monthly revenue per paid Disney+ subscriber only grew from $8.06 to $8.09, while Hulu\u2019s SVOD-only average revenue per subscriber grew from $12.36 to $12.40. At ESPN+, average revenue per user dropped from $6.58 to $6.40.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean Disney\u2019s streaming ambitions are limited. The company released a new streaming app called ESPN on August 21, just in time for football season, ahead of which it acquired NFL Network, the linear rights to NFL RedZone, and NFL Fantasy from the NFL. (For its part, the NFL acquired a 10% equity stake in ESPN.)<\/p>\n

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Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve talked about it being one of the most important steps ESPN has taken really since they went from half a season to a full season of the NFL back in 1987,\u201d CEO Bob Iger told investors.<\/p>\n

Prime time:<\/strong> Prime Video, which in May reported more than 130 million US viewers watching on its ad tier, began airing Nascar races that same month as part of a seven-year agreement inked with Nascar, and has seen races notching about 2 million viewers, according to executives, as well as the youngest audience Nascar broadcasts have drawn in over a decade. The streamer\u2019s upcoming sports slate includes NBA games this fall and a Christmas Day NFL game.<\/p>\n

Prime Video is also making some inroads on the ads side, bringing in an estimated $433 million in advertising revenue in 2024, according to research from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan cited by TV Tech. (That number is projected to grow to $806 million in 2025.) Amazon Ads also inked an ad-tech partnership with Roku that seeks to increase addressability across properties including Prime Video and The Roku Channel.<\/p>\n

And so far, it\u2019s been a pretty good summer for the streamer: The third season of its hit young-adult drama The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em> saw 25 million worldwide viewers in the week after its premiere, 40% higher than the first-week viewership of the show\u2019s second season in 2023.<\/p>\n

To the [HBO] Max: <\/strong>While writing this, we had to remind ourselves it\u2019s no longer Max, but HBO Max. While the streamer has had a difficult time deciding on its brand identity, Warner Bros. Discovery has had an easier time growing its streaming business, adding 3.4 million streaming subscribers in the quarter and growing revenue to $2.8 billion, up 8% (excluding foreign exchange). The company reported 125.7 million global streaming subscribers (57.8 million of which are in the US), and the company said it expects to clear 150 million streaming subscribers by the end of next year.<\/p>\n

With that all said, domestic streaming average revenue per user decreased 8% to $11.16, and the streamer plans to intensify its password-sharing crackdown beginning in September as a way to potentially reverse that trend.<\/p>\n

The company is gearing up for its upcoming split into two businesses, Warner Bros. and Discovery Global, the former of which will house HBO Max. In July, WBD set the leadership for Warner Bros., which will include David Zaslav as president and CEO and Casey Bloys as chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max.<\/p>\n

Mountain to climb:<\/strong> Although Paramount\u2019s much-scrutinized merger with Skydance (which was recently approved by the Trump administration and may include $20 million in free ads for Trump, depending on who you believe) has dominated the headlines for the last few months, its streaming business has continued to chug along. Paramount+, which last reported 77.7 million subscribers at the end of June, saw total revenue grow 23% year over year, according to its July earnings call, and it inked a seven-year deal with UFC for exclusive domestic streaming and broadcast rights domestically starting next year.<\/p>\n

Global average revenue per user on Paramount+ grew 9% YoY, according to the company, but DTC ad revenue (which includes Paramount+) dropped 4%, which the company attributed to lower CPMs and increased CTV ad supply.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, it doesn\u2019t look like the media giant will look to join the spinoffs party.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thinking about…the cable networks, not as declining linear assets that we need to spin off or deal with somehow,\u201d Paramount Skydance President Jeff Shell said at a media event this month. \u201cWe\u2019re thinking of those brands that we have to redefine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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