For years, traditional cable had one trump card against the upstart streamers devouring their business: live programming. Not anymore.

While streamers have chipped away at linear TV’s live programming monopoly for a couple of years now, 2024 marked a turning point — the end of streaming’s era of experimentation with live programming and the start of its new era of unbridled ambition.

We Now Go Live…

Streaming’s big year in live programming started off with a bang… much to the chagrin of NFL fans, some of whom were forced to sign up for a $6-per-month Peacock subscription to catch last season’s AFC Wild Card game in January. The first-ever streaming-exclusive NFL playoff game drew 28 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and sparked “the single biggest subscriber acquisition moment ever measured,” according to industry analytics firm Antenna. For Peacock, it was just the start of a strong year: The streamer also nabbed a Week 1 (and ultra-rare Friday night) NFL game to start the season, and successfully integrated NBC’s broader coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

But that’s Peacock, an offshoot of a company well familiar with live event programming. This was also the year that Netflix, after achieving hypercritical scale with some 282 million global subscribers, emerged as the undisputed winner of the so-called streaming wars. With victory secured, Netflix made the leap into live programming:

• As with its inaugural live broadcast in 2023, the star-studded Netflix Cup golf tournament, Netflix pursued one-off live events in 2024, such as The Roast of Tom Brady, a limited series late night talk show hosted by John Mulaney, a hot dog eating contest, and a tennis match between Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz.
• More notably, it hosted a boxing match between former YouTuber Jake Paul and former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, which drew a peak of 65 million concurrent streams (and a boatload of technical issues), and two Christmas Day NFL games (which drew an unduplicated audience of 65 million). In two weeks, it will start weekly worldwide broadcasts of WWE’s Monday Night Raw.

“In 2012, I said we’re going to become HBO before HBO could become us,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Serandos told The New York Times in May. “What I should have said back then is, ‘We want to be HBO and CBS and BBC and all those different networks around the world that entertain people.’” Now it has the final puzzle piece.

Coming Attractions: Streamers will take on even more live programming in 2025. The NBA is moving to Amazon (which is already two years into an exclusive 10-year deal to broadcast the NFL’s Thursday Night Football), as well as NBC, which will stream some games on Peacock. Apple will continue its seven-year deal to broadcast the MLB’s Friday Night Baseball, which began in 2022. Disney swears ESPN will, eventually, be available as a stand-alone streaming product. If you haven’t done so already, there’s a cord near you that may need cutting.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to find the line between media companies and tech companies, and even more difficult to pinpoint the difference between internet content and traditional TV and movies.

Regardless, most US households seem to see it all as a distinction without a difference. Just ask Google, which earlier this month released some eye-opening statistics showing a shift in YouTube viewing habits.

YouTube Killed the TV Star

YouTube may have started off as a platform for the smallest of screens — laptops, tablets, and smartphones — but it’s increasingly dominating the biggest screen in the house: the living room TV. In fact, in a recent blog post, YouTube says viewers watch a gargantuan 1 billion hours of content per day on their TVs, via devices like Roku and Apple TV.

The trend is discernible across various content categories. Per YouTube, viewers watch 400 million hours worth of podcasts on their TVs per month (yes, watch podcasts), while the watch time of sports content, such as highlights and post-game interviews, on TVs grew 30% year-over-year.

As you might imagine, all of this has done wonders for YouTube’s bottom line: 

• Google doesn’t break out profit figures for YouTube, but in its most recent earnings call, it said the platform crossed $50 billion in revenue from ads and subscriptions in the previous four quarters.
• That marks a record for YouTube, and, for perspective, bests the $33 billion in annual revenue Netflix reported in 2023 — and YouTube is built on users creating content on their own (though top creators are paid out in ad revenue-sharing schemes), rather than spending billions on production costs.

Let’s Connect: So, yes, YouTube is replacing TV. In more ways than one. Some of YouTube’s subscription revenue comes from YouTube TV, the live-stream service that gives users access to basically every channel that used to be in their cable or satellite package. The service was originally pitched as a cheaper alternative to cable, with virtually all the same perks, and has garnered some 8 million subscribers. But earlier this month, YouTube announced it’d be raising prices for the service in January by $10 per month, to $82.99 per month. In other words: For the price of a YouTube TV subscription you could buy a lot of things. Like, say, a comparable cable package with your favorite telecom giant.

If you don’t get it yet, traditional linear TV is an albatross.

In 2024, legacy media giants finally had enough — and started making their own off-ramps.

Tuning Out

The overall subscriber base for pay-TV services — which includes cable, satellite, and internet services like YouTube TV — is collapsing. According to industry analysts at MoffettNathanson, the first quarter of the year saw 2.37 million customers unsubscribe from their pay-TV services, the worst quarterly drop ever, followed by another 1.6 million drop in Q2 (MoffettNathanson’s third-quarter figures are expected next month).

For legacy media players like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and NBCUniversal — which have long maintained major assets across broadcast and cable TV — it’s clearer than ever that they are aboard the Titanic. 

In response, they started making their own lifeboats in 2024:

• In November, NBCUniversal parent Comcast announced a spin-off of most of its cable assets, which would become a new publicly-traded company majority-owned by Comcast and comprised of cable assets like MSNBC, USA, and E!. Notably, reality TV powerhouse Bravo, Spanish-language network Telemundo, broadcast giant NBC, and streamer Peacock are all staying with the mothership.
• WBD execs must’ve liked what they saw. Earlier this month, the ailing giant announced a restructuring of its business to place linear assets and streaming assets into two distinct business units (though HBO, notably, is paired with streamer Max), possibly setting up a future spin-off or sale of the linear assets and sparking a much needed share-price surge of 15% the day the news was announced.

Company Town: Disney may be contemplating a parallel path. CEO Bob Iger has publicly floated similar plans, including even a sale of broadcast giant ABC (though he’s since backed off). More consequently, the company has grown less militant about making cable providers bundle (and therefore charge customers for) all of its various linear TV products this year, long a negotiating tactic for the storied firm.