About this Forecast

This forecast combines three previous Rethink TV datasets: SVoD, AVoD, and FAST. The goal is to provide a consolidated view of the global OTT streaming market, from the perspective of the services – tracking users, revenue, and hours watched, across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & North Africa.

It covers the forecast period of 2026-2031, but also includes 2024-2025 for context.

We have retained the classifications we used previously but have also added Others sections to each of the categories. Within the spreadsheet, each service is presented in the same table, so that readers can filter the view as needed.

Doing so illustrates the scale of YouTube within the results, both in terms of users and viewing time. It also shows that the Chinese services that are primarily AVoD-based are much larger components of the global streaming ecosystem than most people will be aware of.

Future work will attempt to quantify the scale of video consumed outside of the Media & Entertainment (M&E) ecosystem, as Meta’s platforms and TikTok are significant elements, and much of YouTube’s growth is driven by the popularity of its Shorts service. For now, this resource is still focused on long-form M&E content.

The other major consideration is the increasingly blurred lines that exist between each of these streaming categories. We now have Subscription Video on Demand supported by advertising, Advertising Video on Demand supported by subscriptions, and FAST services that are not just a collection of channels but provide library access to on-demand titles.

Similarly, the on-demand function of these streaming services is increasingly giving way to live video, and that in turn is driving considerable change in the underlying technologies that power these streaming services – chiefly in CDNs, but also in the choice of codecs used to encode the video that is transported through the CDNs.

Within the list of services, there’s been considerable consolidation in the past year or so. In our previous FAST forecasts, we have warned that the market is dominated by two services that are owned by large media firms and that Pluto TV, owned by Paramount, and Tubi, owned by Fox, could be merged into larger services and thus disappear from FAST. With Fox now buying Roku, another is added to that list.

With Paramount Skydance attempting to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, it looks inevitable that Pluto TV will be merged into whatever comes of the combination of the SVoD services. With Fox buying the Roku hardware platform and The Roku Channel ecosystem, there is a similar chance that Tubi and The Roku Channel could be merged too.

Over the next five years, the classifications between each of these services in the compendium will look slightly more arbitrary. We know that some of the FAST services already do not like being called such, because the term has a negative connotation within this industry. Given how much of the FAST viewing time is spent on on-demand video instead of linear channels, there is logic behind this position.

For consistency’s sake, we are preserving our historic classifications, but with both the business models and the parent companies changing, this list will look quite different, should anyone be reading this document in five years.

Deliverables

This forecast consists of two deliverables: an Excel spreadsheet and a PDF.

This forecast’s spreadsheet contains 357 tables and 170 graphs, tracking North America, Latin America, Europe, APAC, and MENA.

The KPIs tracked across SVoD, AVoD, and FAST are:

• Total Users
• Paid Subscribers
• Ad-Supported Users
• Total Revenue
• Subscription Revenue
• Advertising Revenue
• Annual Hours Watched

The PDF provides:

• Explanations for each of the forecast categories, that dive into 40 graphs and 7 tables.
• Historic context for the services, and explanations of their future moves and challenges.
• A collection of articles from our Faultline newsletter, which provide valuable additional context and opinion.
• Detailed explanations of the forecast’s assumptions, conclusions, and methodology.