Ampere predicts streamers will outspend commercial broadcasters on content for the first time in 2025, and overall content spend will rise 0.4% YoY to $248B
Max Goldbart / Deadline :
Context & Ripple Effects
Ampere’s forecast marks a turning point after its earlier view that the original-TV spending boom would slow sharply in 2023. Streaming investment nevertheless remained concentrated among major platforms, which were projected to spend more than $23B on originals in 2023.
The shift also coincides with streaming services building more advertising-backed revenue: Ampere projected $17B in US streaming ad revenue for 2025. A later forecast of streaming content spend exceeding $100B in 2026 suggests this was an inflection point rather than a one-off budget change.
First-order effects
- Streaming services are forecast to become the larger collective buyer of content relative to commercial broadcasters in 2025, strengthening their position in commissioning and rights negotiations.
- With total content expenditure projected to rise only 0.4%, the crossover is chiefly a reallocation of spending leadership, not a broad-based expansion of the content market.
Second-order effects
- Studios, producers, and rights holders will have greater incentive to tailor pitches and distribution deals to streaming buyers, while broadcasters face tighter trade-offs between programming investment and other costs.
- The contrast between constrained overall growth and streamers’ higher budgets should intensify competition for scarce premium rights, following streamers’ earlier rapid increase in sports-rights spending.
Third-order effects
- If sustained, the buyer-power center of television content shifts from advertising-led broadcasters toward platform operators that combine subscriptions, advertising, and global distribution.
- Flat aggregate spending would make the shift less favorable for the wider supplier base: investment may concentrate in fewer, better-capitalized buyers rather than lift commissions across the market.
The trend: Streaming platforms are becoming the primary organizers and financiers of premium video content, even as total industry spending grows only modestly.