How the Big Streaming Services Stack Up Heading Into 2025

Meanwhile, WBD’s chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, said the global subscriber growth came down to several factors, including the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games, traction from international launches, and momentum on bundle deals with Disney+, Max, and Hulu.

As the industry further consolidates amid increased competition and decreasing linear assets (both WBD and Paramount had multibillion-dollar write-downs in 2024 related to depreciating linear properties), bundles are an increasingly attractive business plan. Peacock, Netflix, and Apple TV+ also announced a bundle earlier this year.

Paramount+‘s complicated 2024

Paramount+ added 3.5 million new subscribers in its most recent quarter, bringing its total to 72 million. This makes Paramount+ the fifth-largest streaming service, behind Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Max.

The news comes amid a tumultuous time behind the scenes for the company, with Paramount currently undergoing an acquisition by Skydance Media, which is expected to close in the first half of 2025. As a result of the merger, the company has promised to cut 15% of its workforce in order to find cost savings.

As the company looks to balance its budget, it’s also engaged in an ongoing dispute with Nielsen, failing to reach a new contract with the legacy measurement giant.

Peacock goes for gold

Like many other companies, NBCUniversal is continuing to use live sports to fuel its streamer. For instance, viewers streamed more than 23.5 billion minutes of 2024 Olympics coverage across NBCU’s portfolio, with most of that taking place on Peacock. To date, NBCU’s streamer has ridden a wave of viewership from the Olympics and NFL to now reach 36 million subscribers.

The company is leaning into streaming even more following parent company Comcast recently announcing that it has packaged several of its cable properties into a new company, extricating them from the conglomerate. The move will likely change Peacock’s relationship with NBCU cable stations, although that remains to be seen.

Looking Tubi a contender

Alhough SVODs (subscription video-on-demand platforms) get a lot of attention, the free ad-supported streamers are continuing to gain more share in the market and grow their ad numbers.

Reporting its fiscal-first-quarter earnings in November, Fox said that Tubi, which captured 1.8% of streaming in October, saw a 19% ad sales bump in the first quarter. The streamer is also on pace to cross the $1 billion in revenue mark in the fiscal year.