In 2024, the global audience of OTT services (Over-the-top, streaming multimedia) reached almost five billion users. According to forecasts, by 2029 this figure will exceed five billion, and the total annual revenue of the global streaming market will grow to more than $400 billion. The largest platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max are constantly competing for the attention and time of viewers, offering thousands of hours of original content and new advertising models. How this market is developing and who the leading players will be in 2025 – in the material Mind.
Content consumption is increasingly actively moving from traditional television to digital platforms. A feature of the last two years has been the strengthening of advertising-supported subscriptions: analysts expect global OTT advertising spending to reach around $250 billion by the end of the decade, as both Netflix and Disney+ are already testing cheaper ad-supported plans.
In 2024, there was an active transfer of sports tournaments and significant cultural events to streaming platforms. For example, Amazon Prime Video signed multi-year contracts with the National Football League (NFL), and HBO Max and Disney+ are considering options for broadcasting basketball and football championships. All this strengthens the so-called cable abandonment effect, when even conservative viewing audiences – sports fans – are slowly switching to OTT.
Another noticeable trend is the growing demand for regional content. According to some estimates, Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ are allocating increasingly large budgets for localization and the creation of local original series and films. This helps attract new subscribers in countries in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, which are showing steady growth in subscriptions.
Netflix – one of the oldest and largest players in the OTT market. In the third quarter of 2024, it recorded approximately 282 million subscribers. In the year alone, the number of users increased by more than five million, which is associated with an active policy of restricting password sharing and the simultaneous expansion of new tariff plans. In 2025, Netflix will increase the cost of subscription for users from the USA and Canada.
Netflix's annual revenue in 2023 reached more than $33 billion, and in the third quarter of 2024 the company showed $9.8 billion in quarterly revenue. In terms of geographical distribution, Europe, the Middle East and Africa remains the most active, where the number of subscribers exceeds 96 million. In North America, the company has about 67 million paid accounts, while Asia-Pacific and Latin America are showing gradual but steady growth.
Netflix's success story is largely based on original content. The company invested more than $17 billion in the production of its own films and series between 2022 and 2024 alone, including “Weird Wonders,” “Wednesday,” and “The Squidward Game.” This allowed it to expand beyond the US, as Korean and European projects adapted into many languages attract an audience of millions.
Amazon Prime Video does not disclose all internal indicators as transparently as Netflix, but the number of users who have access to the video service exceeds 200 million. This result is due to the fact that Amazon Prime subscribers have access to the Prime Video library. In 2024, the platform covered approximately 22% of the OTT market in the US, slightly ahead of Netflix in share, but inferior in the segment of the number of active views.
An important step was the acquisition of the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 2022 for $8.45 billion, after which the library was replenished with the «James Bond» franchise and a collection of classic films. In addition, Prime Video is increasingly competing in the sports rights segment: it is on this platform that Thursday Night Football (NFL) matches are broadcast, and exclusive tennis competitions are also available. Thanks to this approach, Amazon is trying to reach an audience that previously preferred cable or satellite TV channels for sports events.
Another defining case is the success of flagship series like «The Boys» or «The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel». Both stories brought Prime Video international fame: «The Boys» attracted the attention of superhero fans who wanted to see something radically different from the classic format. These projects in 2023-2024 formed a stable core audience, ready to renew their subscription.
Disney+ only launched in November 2019, but in the third quarter of 2024 it reached over 153 million subscribers. The reason for the rapid growth was the iconic brands and franchises: «Star Wars», Marvel, Pixar animation and the classic Disney catalog. The company spends billions of dollars on its own projects, including the series «The Mandalorian» or «WandaVision», and is rapidly expanding into European and Asian markets.
One interesting feature of the service is that almost half of its subscribers in the US are households without children. This proves that Disney has long since moved beyond being a children's company, as a significant part of the adult audience watches Marvel films or remakes of classic cartoons.
As of 2023-2024, the studio's total spending on streaming content has reached at least $2.5 billion in losses (due to intensive investments), but top management emphasizes that this is a strategic decision for further expansion.
Disney is expanding its proprietary library and is seeking to integrate the Hulu streaming service. This approach allows it to distinguish between a family format (Disney+) and multi-genre shows for a mature audience. According to the latest data, Hulu has more than 50 million subscribers, and more than half of them are young people who are ready to watch movies and series with advertising blocks.
HBO Max is associated with high-level drama and powerful series such as «Game of Thrones», «The Sopranos» or «True Detective». After the merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery, the new platform was named Max and continues to combine a large film library with sports broadcasts and Discovery TV content.
According to the results of the third quarter of 2024, HBO Max, together with Discovery+ and other direct-to-consumer services, has approximately 110 million subscribers. The peculiarity of this platform is its focus on quality: most of the audience expects drama series with high ratings, but the management is expanding the offer with entertainment shows, children's programs and even sports events. In 2024, it was announced that the rights to broadcast NBA matches and NHL hockey games would be expanded, as well as an additional news block based on CNN, integrated into Max.
Despite this expansion, HBO Max continues to position itself as a premium platform and does not focus on a large number of new releases, trying to maintain a high production bar. This strategy attracts a paying viewer, although it implies a higher average subscription check.
In 2023, approximately 83% of consumers in the US were already using SVoD (Subscription Video on Demand) services. At the same time, 36% of baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) said that they do not watch any paid streaming services and prefer traditional television. However, this share is decreasing, as the younger generation practically does not support cable formats: about 33% of Generation Z (1995-2010) have never used linear TV at all and did not have a cable connection. As a result, there is a gradual outflow from classic television networks in favor of OTT services.
On average, in 2024, teenagers in the US spent more than 90 minutes a day on TikTok, and children under 18 spent almost 56 minutes on YouTube. While TikTok or YouTube may not always be seen as classic SVoD, they compete for the same attention and time as Netflix or Disney+. More traditional platforms are trying to incorporate short formats and experiment with interactivity to attract younger audiences.
Ad-supported plans are becoming increasingly popular. Hulu, for example, reported that 62% of its users watch content with ads, and Netflix introduced a cheaper ad-supported plan in 2023-2024, quickly gaining millions of subscriptions. Such packages make subscriptions cheaper while creating additional revenue streams: eMarketer estimates that global OTT ad spending could grow to $250 billion by 2029.
One of the most notable challenges remains account sharing restrictions. Netflix saw its user base grow from five to ten million new paid subscriptions in 2024 after it began blocking accounts that shared passwords outside of the same household. This approach is likely to spread to other platforms, as they view password sharing as lost potential revenue.
Analysts agree that in 2025 the market will continue to be structured around several large players, who will simultaneously start micro-mergers. The trend of joint promotion of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ indicates a desire to enlarge the audience through multi-proposition. HBO Max with Discovery and CNN also forms a kind of «content combine» to cover the widest possible demographic.
Retaining subscribers will require new solutions, from interactive series and games to a broader engagement with the Asia-Pacific market, where streaming is currently the fastest-growing market. With huge spending on sports rights, platforms will compete for football championships, basketball broadcasts and, probably, the Olympics. Against this backdrop, the market will continue to implement artificial intelligence technologies for personalized search and recommendations to help users navigate the vast catalog of shows.
Experts also believe that in the foreseeable future, the convergence of SVoD (subscription) and AVoD (free content with advertising) models will continue. Users in countries with unstable economies will look for a more budget-friendly way to watch, while the platforms themselves will try to balance revenues from subscriptions and advertising campaigns.
OTT platforms have significantly changed the distribution of power in the global media industry in recent years. The rapid growth in the number of users, the volume of financing and the purchase of exclusive rights to sports broadcasts have only strengthened the positions of such leaders as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max. The struggle between them continues on various fronts: from content and pricing policy to technical innovations and global advertising models.
Despite the temporary fatigue of the viewer from a large choice, streaming has already become the dominant way to consume video and audio. Television in its classic form is losing market share, and cinemas are increasingly coexisting with premieres that start simultaneously on streaming platforms. As major projects like «Game of Thrones», «The Mandalorian», «Wednesday» or «The Boys» are released immediately online, it is the streaming giants that will shape the global media entertainment market in 2025.
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