Ampere: Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, and Netflix will spend $23B+ in 2023 on original content, up 10% YoY and more than twice the spending of 2019
Context & Ripple Effects
Ampere's forecast marks the moment the five biggest US streamers' original-content budgets were projected to pass $23B in 2023 — up 10% year over year and more than double their 2019 level, capping a four-year escalation that began when Disney+, HBO Max, and Apple TV+ entered the market against an incumbent Netflix.
Subsequent reporting has largely validated the trajectory: Amazon alone disclosed $16.6B in 2022 content spending, up 28% YoY, global streamers put €4.9B into European originals in 2022 per the EAO, and Ampere now projects total streaming content spend crossing $100B in 2026 — meaning the five-player $23B figure was an early marker on a curve that kept climbing even through the Hollywood strikes.
First-order effects
- Netflix, Amazon, Disney, HBO Max, and Apple enter 2023 committed to record original-slate budgets, making commissioned producers, showrunners, and production suppliers direct beneficiaries of the doubled 2019 baseline.
- Each service's originals slate becomes its primary churn-defense asset, since at this spend level exclusive titles are what justify standalone subscriptions rather than licensed catalogs.
Second-order effects
- Budgets shifting toward originals squeeze spending on licensed third-party content, pressuring traditional studios whose libraries were the streamers' cheaper supply source pre-2019.
- The spend surge spills geographically: the EAO's €4.9B figure shows Europe absorbing a growing share as streamers fund local-language originals to meet regional quotas and win subscribers outside the US.
Third-order effects
- Originals spending hardens from a land-grab expense into a permanent fixed cost of competing in streaming, visible in Amazon's post-strike filing showing content spend still rising 14% to $18.9B in 2023.
- If Ampere's own later projections hold, growth decelerates from the 2019–2023 doubling to mid-single digits — signaling consolidation pressure on subscale services that cannot sustain nine-figure annual content commitments.
The trend: Streaming original-content spending is compounding from a five-player $23B arms race in 2023 toward an industry-wide $100B-plus annual cost base by 2026, with growth slowing but never reversing.