Streaming revenue reaches $176 billion in milestone year

Online video services strengthened their dominance in 2025, with research firm Omdia reporting that global streaming subscriptions climbed sharply while pay-TV subscriptions continued to decline.

According to Omdia’s latest TV and video market data, global online video subscriptions reached 2.24 billion by the end of 2025.

That represented a year-on-year increase of 17.6 per cent from the 1.9 billion subscriptions recorded in 2024.

However, the company expects growth to moderate in 2026 as the market enters a more mature phase.

At the same time, global pay-TV subscriptions continued their gradual decline, falling 1.8 per cent year-on-year to 1.03 billion.

The balance of the global television and video market continued shifting towards streaming services.

Online video accounted for 68.4 per cent of the combined 3.3 billion subscriptions worldwide, underlining the sector’s growing dominance.

In terms of revenue, online video surpassed pay-TV for the first time in 2025. Online video revenue rose 13.5 per cent to $176 billion. Meanwhile, pay-TV revenue fell 4 per cent to $170 billion.

Both figures include subscription and transactional income but exclude advertising revenue.

Omdia said its global data highlighted a range of different trends across the individual markets it tracks.

Nevertheless, one common theme was the growing popularity of lower-cost, advertising-supported subscription tiers, which have helped attract new customers to online video platforms.

“The 17.6 per cent increase in subscriptions in 2025 was the largest annual rise since 2021,” said Adam Thomas, Practice Leader for the Media, Entertainment and Advertising team.

“That growth was driven, in particular, by subsidised ad-tier subscriptions offered by telecoms companies and pay-TV operators,” he added.

“The popularity of these lower-cost offers is a key factor behind the fact that subscription numbers grew by 17.6 per cent, while revenue increased by a more moderate 13.5 per cent,” Thomas stated.

Omdia also identified a broader trend across the industry, with streaming platforms increasingly shifting their priorities from expanding subscriber numbers to maximising revenue from existing customers.

This has often involved raising prices for premium subscription packages that do not include advertising.

The company expects this trend to remain prominent in the coming years.

Although discounted advertising-supported packages attracted substantial numbers of price-sensitive consumers in 2025, Omdia believes this will prove to be a short-term development.

With several major online video markets approaching saturation, the company expects a stronger focus on price increases and profit generation to lead to slower subscriber growth.

For the full year of 2026, Omdia forecasts online video subscription growth of 5.6 per cent.

“It’s clear that the availability of attractively priced ad-tier options created a temporary uplift in SVOD subscriber numbers in 2025,” said Tony Gunnarsson, Senior Principal Analyst for TV and Online Video.

“However, this has not changed our longer-term forecast, which remains for low single-digit annual growth rates for the foreseeable future,” he added.