How Did The Major Players Fare In 2025?

After more than five years of gushing red ink, 2025 was the year when streaming across the board started to turn a profit.

There are caveats attached to that statement, of course. NBCUniversal’s Peacock is still making losses, and Apple TV’s economics are impossible to disentangle from its trillion-dollar parent company’s, but nevertheless the year in general will go down as a milestone.

With that long-sought economic maturity has come greater scrutiny of the balance sheet. Although it sometimes feels like streaming is the only arena that counts, a recent report from Morgan Stanley media analysts noted that spending on linear TV remains about double that on streaming. Gone are the days of the firehose of content; even the sector leader, Netflix, has held the line on content expenses of late.

In 2026, Morgan Stanley predicts, “streaming market repair” will be a key phrase across the sector, as “corporate spin-offs and continued cord-cutting are rapidly shrinking legacy TV as an investment factor.”

Streaming remained a headline-grabber this year even before a game-changing deal centering on the assets of Warner Bros. Discovery (with Netflix and Paramount both in hot pursuit as of this writing) was finalized. Disney launched a beefed up new ESPN app, which blends linear feeds from more than a dozen of its networks with a range of streaming-only fare. Fox Corp., for similar strategic reasons, launched a similar flagship, Fox One.

While profits and losses are probably the ultimate measure of success, the metrics of streaming underwent a rethink this year, with Netflix and Disney announcing plans to phase out quarterly reports of subscriber numbers. Revenue per user, engagement and other metrics are now en vogue, though success or failure in streaming, as ever, is subject to interpretation.

Below, in alphabetical order, are the top streaming players and Deadline’s view about how they fared in 2025 as well as what they’re facing next year. This is intended as a comprehensive look at these services – programming, product and overall status in the field, not just value as M&A chess pieces.

HBO Max

2025 Highlight: Becoming the belle of the ball. While HBO Max had gradually earned a place among the top handful of services since its problematic launch in 2020, that slog was supercharged by the acquisition interest by Netflix and Paramount. While either company taking over would mean more upheaval for a company that has cycled through three owners in a decade, for the streaming business the injection of resources will be dramatic – at least until Netflix merges it out of existence.

2025 Lowlight: The rebranding fiasco of Max going back to HBO Max. While Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO, HBO and HBO Max Content, did his best to own the mistake when revealing the revamp at the company’s upfront presentation last May, it still belongs in the corporate annals next to New Coke and Qwikster.

Challenge for 2026: Now that it has finally made it to long-forbidden territories like the UK, Germany and Italy (which were unavailable due to a Sky output deal), what can HBO Max make of it? Netflix has become Netflix by incubating global hits from non-U.S. territories. HBO Max should lean into its prestige reputation and take a page from that playbook.

Biggest question for 2026: Can movies throw around more weight? As solid a hit as Superman and other releases were in theaters during Warner Bros.’ best year in ages (not to mention Materialists and other A24 releases making their debuts on HBO Max), they made minimal waves in streaming. With Harry Potter set to rekindle interest in the film franchise with a series take due in 2027, the clout of movies could be HBO Max’s not-so-secret weapon.

Netflix

2025 Highlight: K-pop Demon Hunters. The roaring success of Sony’s animated musical, which landed at the streaming giant under the companies’ pay-1 output deal, gave Netflix something it has been craving: a bona fide franchise. Riding a tide of pop-culture goodwill, a sing-along version of the movie raked in $19.2 million last fall, topping the weekend box office charts. The film also just recently surpassed 500M views on Netflix.

2025 Lowlight: Yet another video game course-correction. Co-CEO Greg Peters, who has overseen the games effort since it began in earnest in 2022, has not tried to put lipstick on a pig. But this year saw the latest strategic shift away from pricey franchise plays and toward casual games suited to the living room. Last fall, Peters made the news personally at an L.A. conference that an adaptation of the board game Boggle was joining the lineup. While the overall business had a banner year, that damp squib of an announcement seemed to sum up the entire gaming misadventure.

Challenge for 2026: How can management keep the troops focused as they pursue Warner Bros.? At $82.7 billion, the deal would be exponentially larger than any prior M&A transaction in the company’s nearly three-decade history. The most important task for Peters, Ted Sarandos and other top execs is keeping the industry-leading operation humming.

Biggest question for 2026: Will the movie portfolio undergo any more changes under film chairman Dan Lin? The producer and former Warner exec was installed in mid-2024, so his fingerprints may not yet be evident on a recent slate marked by Frankenstein, Electric State, A House of Dynamite, Jay Kelly, and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Lin’s best-known credits include The Lego Movie, It, and other properties with profiles that stand out from Netflix’s recent output.

Paramount+

2025 Highlight: Taylor Sheridan, aka Paramount’s golden goose, kept filling the basket. New seasons of Landman, Tulsa King and Mayor of Kingstown clicked with viewers, as did MobLand, which wasn’t created by Sheridan but was exec produced by his close collaborator, David Glasser. Despite the upheaval of the merger with Skydance, which closed in August and entailed thousands of layoffs, the content kept flowing.

2025 Lowlight: Losing Taylor Sheridan. With more than three years left on his overall deal with Paramount, the Yellowstone creator announced he would segue to NBCUniversal in 2029. Of course, there is spin on both sides, especially with high-priced talent deals under a microscope across the industry. But the notion that newly minted CEO David Ellison spent time courting Sheridan and came up empty didn’t send the ideal signal to the troops.

Challenge for 2026: Ordering off the menu. While Sheridan’s world, South Park, the UFC, CBS programming (including the NFL) and Paramount movies are continuing to be marquee draws for the streaming service, it needs to break new ground if it’s going to muscle its way into the top echelon. Should the WBD quest or other M&A deals bear fruit, they would be a quick route to scale. Regardless, Netflix alum Cindy Holland and her troops will need to come up with an equivalent to Orange is the New Black or the many other follow-ups to House of Cards she presided over in her old job. Those originals positioned Netflix as not just intriguing but essential.

Biggest question for 2026: Will David Ellison’s long-promised tech overhaul of Paramount+, with or without the Warner Bros. Discovery assets, bear fruit in the new year? Since the media business set off on the expensive path of chasing Netflix nearly a decade ago, it has made a number of investments that were billed as pixie dust capable of transforming them into true tech giants. AI is the latest element said to confer such power. Technology is ever-present in the ecosystem, so the fact that it exists isn’t new. The main question facing Ellison & Co. is: How will they use it?

Disney+

2025 Highlight: ESPN’s streaming service finally has something to offer. For years, Disney’s sports streaming efforts were hindered by fragmented rights that made it nearly impossible to watch consequential games on its ESPN+ app, but the Mouse House finally upped its game in 2025. After acquiring NFL Network/RedZone, ESPN launched a brand new comprehensive streaming service in August that offered not only every Monday Night Football matchup across both ESPN and ABC this season but a ton of other streaming-exclusive games as well. The WWE also began offering premium live events on ESPN’s app as well.

2025 Lowlight: Although it wasn’t exclusively related to streaming, Disney’s decision to temporarily pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air while facing pressure from the Trump administration was a lowlight for democracy and may have had a negative effect on public perception of the company across the board. Campaigns circulated online encouraging Disney+ and Hulu subscribers to ditch their plans. Independent data reports have estimated millions of Americans canceled their subscriptions in that aftermath, though the economic fallout is hard to quantify. Disney is about to stop reporting streaming subscriber numbers in quarterly earnings reports, so the full impact of that backlash may not be known, since only a portion of those effects were documented in the company’s Q4 earnings. Regardless, it was yet another year of controversy for Disney.

Challenge for 2026: Stay in consumers’ good graces. This year was as tumultuous as ever for Disney, and 2026 looks to present its own challenges as the company looks to dip its toes further into user-generated AI content. That ventures could go either way, as consumer sentiment specifically around AI is constantly shifting, but any rollout will surely spark backlash from the creative community. The one thing that is clear is that Disney could benefit from a little less turbulence with consumers in 2026, so it should proceed with caution.

Biggest question for 2026: Disney isn’t the only company to tease AI-generated content might soon be available on its streaming platforms, but it certainly has the biggest IP to work from in that regard. After inking a blockbuster deal with OpenAI, how might Disney’s AI ambitions intersect with its streaming offerings in 2026?

Apple TV

2025 Highlight: Severance. The show returned for its second season this year and quickly became both a critical and cultural darling. It earned 27 Emmy nominations and won eight, including Outstanding Lead Actress for Britt Lower and Outstanding Supporting Actor for Tramell Tillman. The streamer is also closing out the year on a high note with Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus, which is already shaping up to be a strong awards contender after earning Rhea Seehorn a Golden Globe nomination. It would be wrong not to acknowledge that F1 scored Apple’s biggest ever box office opening this year, too.

2025 Lowlight: The streaming era has brought about many conundrums, and one that it appears has confounded multiple media companies is what the heck to call their service. While not nearly as egregious as the HBO Max debacle, Apple TV quietly rebranded earlier this year too, removing the “+” sign due to apparent confusion it caused. The problem? It only created more confusion, given that Apple TV is also the name of the streaming hardware it sells, as well as the name of the app within the device.

Challenge for 2026: Eddy Cue, Senior Vice President of Services at Apple, admitted in October that the streamer has experienced a few setbacks that have left it “a little further behind than where I’d like to be.” While he pushed back on claims that the service’s subscriber numbers sit around 45M, arguing that it is “significantly more than that,” the point remains that Apple seems to still be small potatoes in the streaming world despite some heavyweight content. The streamer’s financials are pretty impossible to disentangle from its trillion-dollar parent company’s, but it seems to have a ways to go before it’s in the big leagues.

Biggest question for 2026: What is the tech giant’s next move in streaming? As all the chess pieces are moving rapidly across the board, Apple is a peculiar one that seems to have removed itself from the whims of the streaming wars. Apple TV remains the only premium streaming service without an ad tier. The company is also decidedly not joining the furor over Warner Bros. So, it begs the question, will Apple make any big moves next year, or quietly stick to what works?

Peacock

2025 Highlight: Peacock had a lot riding on Season 7 of Love Island USA after the reality show finally took off last year, and, boy, did it deliver. The season broke every viewership record it possibly could, becoming Peacock’s most-watched original season ever with 18B minutes viewed throughout the two months it aired this summer. For better or worse, the show was everywhere, and so were its contestants. Notable wins on the scripted front: The Paper and All Her Fault both performed quite well. The Office spinoff was renewed before the episodes even hit the streamer, and All Her Fault topped the Luminate weekly TV rankings in the week it premiered. It was the first time that a Peacock original series had been No. 1 since the Luminate rankings were introduced.

2025 Lowlight: Ads, ads, and more ads. Every major premium streaming platform, save for Apple, has introduced an ad-tier by this point. So, why does Peacock’s approach to ads feel particularly obnoxious? NBCUniversal recently touted “arrival ads,” which will bombard users with an ad as soon as they log onto the platform. The company also says it’ll use AI tools to scan live content and place ads at pivotal moments with which “advertiser’s ad or creative automatically aligns.” Think big moments, like when a team hits the 10-yard line — aka, the time when a viewer would arguably be most agitated by being confronted with an ad.

Challenge for 2026: Peacock has certainly had its moments, but is it considered a must-have? Having canceleld Poker Face, Based on a True Story, and more this year, the streamer just doesn’t seem to be winning viewers over with its scripted content. The looming sale of WB to one of NBCUniversal’s rivals, Netflix or Paramount, would supercharge either of those studios’ content libraries and could potentially be spell bad news for Peacock, unless it can hold out until 2029 when Taylor Sheridan arrives.