Here’s How Much Everyone Will Spend on Content in 2025
Here is how much Netflix, WBD, NBCU, Paramount, Amazon, Apple, Fox, and Disney will spend on content in 2025.
www.indiewire.com
Here’s How Much Everyone Will Spend on Content in 2025
Forget Netflix, pitch your film to Universal.By Tony Maglio
February 19, 2025 9:00 am
An 8-way split of the logos for major media companies
Logos courtesy of each company
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Netflix “spends far more” on direct-to-consumer content than anyone else, as MoffettNathanson pointed out in a new note to clients — and obtained by IndieWire — but not on content overall. So who does? Well, the media analysts are on that too. The answer to our question certainly isn’t Apple, even though as the world’s largest corporation by market cap it sure could outspend everyone else.
Below is a comprehensive list of the major media companies we cover and you consume, minus maybe one or two. Sony Pictures, for example, is harder to pin down as one branch of a large Japanese country; Lionsgate is going through a weird thing with Starz at the moment, and it is less transparent (and less studied) than the larger corporations on this list.
Without further adieu, with 2025 content budgets in ascending order…
Apple
Apple will spend $7.5 billion on content in 2025, per MoffettNathanson, up a bit from the $7.3 billion it spent in 2024. The new budget is a modest 3 percent increase spread across the combination of Apple Films, Apple TV+ series, and other content.ADVERTISEMENT
If you think Apple’s content budget is peanuts (not those Peanuts that it also streams), it kind of is. But that makes sense when you consider streaming service Apple TV+ (now on Android!) for Apple is essentially “a rounding error,” as MoffettNathanson wrote.
Amazon
Apple and Amazon: together forever. The two biggest companies on the list (and two of the five largest in the world) spend the least on content. It’s not so much that they’re cheap, it’s more like they’re not especially in the content game. Like Apple TV+, Prime Video is fine as a loss leader for Amazon. For Apple, it is iPhone sales that allow Apple TV+ to exist; for Amazon, Prime Video is an afterthought to whatever is in your cart right now.Per MoffettNathanson, Amazon will spend $9.1 billion on content in 2025, which would be down a bit (2 percent) from its $9.3 billion cash-content spend last year. However, a source with knowledge of the budget tells IndieWire the company’s content budget is actually up a hair (though almost flat, the person acknowledged) from last year, which puts our rankings in a bit of a pickle.
Amazon, which houses Amazon Studios, Prime Video, and the studio MGM, will this year spend less on entertainment and more on sports by virtue of its new NBA deal. Sort of the bizarro WBD; more on that in a bit.
Fox
Fox just had to go and raise its budget and throw that aforementioned pickle into our rankings.Per MoffettNathanson, Fox’s estimated $9.2 billion in content spend is up double digits (14 percent, to be precise) from the $8.1 billion it spent in 2024. Here also, the difference is sports, namely this past Sunday’s Super Bowl. Fox sure saw a return on that investment however. The company said it made a record $800 million in ad sales across Fox and Tubi.
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Speaking of ROI, those advertisers, some of which paid as much as $9 million for a 30-second slot, got their money’s worth. The Philadelphia Eagles beatdown of the Kansas City Chiefs set a new Super Bowl record with 127.7 million viewers.
Paramount Global
Here come the big boys in the space. Paramount Global will spend an estimated $15.2 billion on content in 2025, down 7 percent from $16.4 billion in 2024. Even with the self-subtraction, Paramount’s overall content budget is a big leap from Fox, Amazon, and Apple. It is a testament to the size and scope of a studio when it can set aside $15 billion for films and TV shows while in cost-cutting mode ahead of the company’s merger with Skydance — you know, assuming the Trump administration lets that happen.Paramount’s CBS, like Fox’s, er, Fox, spends a healthy portion of its budget on NFL games. The broadcast networks also have entire primetimes to fill with scripted and unscripted content. Unlike Fox, Paramount also has major movie studio Paramount Pictures and a serious (sorry Tubi, you’re cool for what you are) streaming platform, Paramount+, to load up with originals.
Netflix
You may be surprised to see Netflix land in this mid spot on our list, but when everything you make is for your streaming platform, cash spend of “roughly $18 billion” on content per recent Netflix guidance, goes a long way. (MoffettNathanson estimates $18.6 billion for Netflix’s 2025 budget, up 15 percent from the same analysts’ $16.2 billion estimate in 2024, when Netflix said it spent $17 billion in 2024 — so there’s some margin for error here.)It is worth pointing out here that given its huge subscriber base (302 million global paid subscribers at the end of 2024), Netflix’s relatively reasonable content spend per subscriber is on par with Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney, which spend far more (as you’re about to see).
“Because it has more content, it drives better engagement, leading to more subscribers and possibly better pricing power in a virtuous cycle that has played out quite well for the company to date,” Robert Fishman of MoffettNathanson wrote. “This is the enduring power of Netflix’s first-mover advantage.”
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This year, WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” hit Netflix’s books, so that’s one added expense. Plus, imagine the “Squid Game”-stairs budget alone. The final season of that and its other biggest series “Stranger Things” both arrive this year.
Warner Bros. Discovery
There is a bright side to Warner Bros. Discovery losing the NBA to those pesky Amazon blank checks, sort of. WBD now has a whole lot of money to spend on non-sports, if it chooses to do so. MoffettNathanson estimated WBD plans to spend the same $19.5 billion on content in 2025 that it did in 2024, just in a different manner.To note, it is not just the annual NBA budget that can (and sounds like it will) be re-allocated this year. WBD widely carries the Olympics internationally, and 2025 is an off-year for the games.
Disney
Disney has a whole bunch of platforms to populate with shows, movies, and sports, including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, as well as ABC, its cable channels, and its theatrical arm. Like WBD, Disney is running back its 2024 cash content budget of $23 billion, per recent filings. (MoffettNathanson has Disney’s budget flat at $23.4 billion, to be more specific.)That’s about a billion dollars less than Disney executives expected to spend in 2025 just a few months ago. The unceremonious deletion of Venu, a sports-centric streaming service that Disney had partnered on with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, likely freed up a few bucks for each company in the canceled joint venture.
NBCU (including Sky)
We’ve arrived at the media company with the deepest pockets — or rather, the media company willing to dig the deepest into its pockets for the sake of video entertainment.At the same time as it boots a bunch of cable channels and digital assets to SpinCo., NBCUniversal is expected to spend $27.1 billion on content in 2025, per MoffettNathanson, down from $27.5 billion in 2024.
Even (soon to be) without MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen, E!, Syfy, and Golf Channel — and holdings like Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, and Sports Engine — NBCU is a huge media company. There is the NBC broadcast network, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks, Illumination, Focus Features, Peacock— it’s not just 2025 films “Jurassic World Rebirth” and “Wicked: For Good” running up the receipts.
