By India McCarty
Viewership numbers were up across the board this past December, thanks to sporting events and movies.
“Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Hallmark, Netflix and Amazon all saw notable gains for the month,” Nielsen reported, citing its December 2025 Media Distributor Gauge analysis.
The group pointed to “distributors airing key sports events and movies” as the reason for the “record-breaking viewership during the peak holiday season.”
YouTube and Disney took the top two spots, with 12.7% and 10.7% of viewers, respectively. This marked a 4% increase for Disney, thanks to its partnership with ESPN, “which recorded a 30% viewership increase driven by Monday Night Football, the expanded College Football Playoffs schedule, and College Gameday,” per Nielsen.
Related: Streaming Hits New Milestone, Thanks to NFL
Disney’s empire made gains but YouTube leads in overall TV use in December, Nielsen’s latest Media Distributor Gauge shows. Full chart: https://t.co/NkSnwZGxOX pic.twitter.com/O5avnwDyX3
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 27, 2026
It wasn’t just sports giving channels and streamers a boost; Hallmark (1.2%) “maintained strong momentum from November and secured the top 5 movie telecasts across cable distributors” with movies like SHE’S MAKING A LIST, SINGLE ON THE 25TH, A SUITE HOLIDAY ROMANCE, A MAKE OR BREAK HOLIDAY and JOY TO THE WORLD.
December was also a big month for streaming. Nielsen reported that “streaming viewership captured 47.5% of television in December 2025, eclipsing its previous record set in July 2025 to achieve the largest share of TV ever reported in Nielsen’s The Gauge.”
Once again, sporting events were behind these high numbers — both Netflix and Prime Video ran NFL games, giving the streamers “22.5% of total TV usage across [Christmas Day].”
Nielsen recently announced some changes coming to how it will measure and report data. The company informed clients it will be incorporating data about consumer behavior into reports, which could potentially result in “a one-time expansion of the number of households, or ‘universe,’ watching cable and broadcast TV, and a potential diminution of the overall audience watching streaming,” per Variety.
“Nielsen is committed to producing the most accurate and relevant data possible for our clients. This enhancement, in coordination with many of our recent product innovations, helps us do that,” Nielsen said in a statement about the change. “The ARF DASH TV Universe Study was recently accredited by the MRC and the industry has embraced it. We are working with clients directly to help guide them through this update.”
As the TV landscape continues to change, Nielsen’s findings show the direction in which streamers are headed — and the changes its own reporting will soon undergo.
Read Next: Streaming Just Beat Out Traditional TV—Again
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