By India McCarty
Streaming just overtook traditional TV in another category — for the first time ever, streaming services have outspent traditional broadcasters.
“Streamers are expected to pump a jaw-dropping $101 billion into content this year, marking a 6% jump from 2025,” Android Headlines reported, citing research done by Ampere Analysis.
For context, that’s “roughly 40% of all global spending,” per the outlet.
“Four out of every ten dollars being spent on TV shows and movies worldwide is coming from streaming services,” Android Headlines continued, adding that traditional TV is “struggling to keep up.”
They continued, “The reasons aren’t exactly surprising — advertising revenue keeps taking hits, production costs won’t stop climbing and viewers just aren’t watching linear TV the way they used to. It’s a perfect storm, and traditional networks are caught right in the middle of it.”
Related: Did You Know Gen Z Prefers Social Media Content Over Traditional TV?
Global content investment is projected to go beyond $250bn this year, with #streamers accounting for nearly half of total spend. Ampere covers the shifting dynamics reshaping the market.
Check out the full release: https://t.co/z50IZjTQQQ pic.twitter.com/JNtXlFdUKp
— Ampere Analysis (@AmpereAnalysis) January 12, 2026
“The accelerating shift in content investment toward streaming underscores a structural rebalancing of the global TV market, with scale and reach emerging as the central competitive differentiators for operators to remain buoyant,” Peter Ingram, a research manager at Ampere Analysis, explained.
Ampere has been keeping track of these numbers. In a 2025 report, the organization reported that VOD spending would “increase by 6%.”
“The continued growth of VoD spend, combined with the more cautious outlook of linear broadcasters, highlights the shifting role of traditional television as viewer demand turns to digital platforms and streaming,” they continued.
This is just the latest milestone streamers have hit, beating out traditional TV broadcasters.
In June of 2025, The Hollywood Reporter shared that “streaming captured 44.8 percent of viewing time in the United States for May, beating the combined tally of 44.2 percent for cable (24.1 percent) and broadcast (20.1 percent)” for the first time ever.
YouTube and Netflix, the two biggest streamers, accounted for 20% of all TV use. For comparison, the streaming pair almost beat the broadcast total by themselves.
“It’s fitting that this inflection point coincides with the four year anniversary of Nielsen’s The Gauge, which has become the gold standard for streaming TV measurement,” Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao said in a statement. “It’s also a credit to media companies, who have deftly adapted their programming strategies to meet their viewers where they are watching TV, whether it’s on streaming or linear platforms.”
Streaming platforms’ recent outperformance of traditional TV is just another indication of the dominance of streamers in the world of television.
Read Next: Will Streaming Keep the TV Industry Growing?
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