These 6 Companies Spend More on Content Than Everyone Else Combined

Consolidation deniers may want to skip this article.

A new study by Ampere Analysis has found that, together, the top 6 global content providers — Disney, Comcast, Google, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, and Paramount — now account for the majority (about 51 percent) of the industry’s total content-spend landscape, up from 47 percent in 2020. The half-dozen media giants contribute $126 billion annually to the big picture; about one-third of that is for streaming programming.

About 45 percent of the grouping’s combined annual budget goes to original content; smaller pieces of the pie go to sports content and acquired film and TV programming.

Disney singlehandedly accounts for 14 percent of the entire 2024 investment, globally, in TV and film content. Its acquisition of Comcast’s one-third stake in Hulu further separate the top 2 spenders.

In third place is Google, the owner of YouTube. Though the user-generated-content platform does not actually pay its creators, it does pay them out. YouTube and its creators split the revenue generated from the ads that run ahead of — and during — videos. That’s good enough for Ampere.

Surely Netflix, the single largest streamer in the world (by subscribers), is next, right? Wrong. Warner Bros. Discovery still spends more across its streaming services, cable channels, and film studios.

Netflix has averaged $14.5 billion in annual investment in content since the COVID-19 pandemic. With a foray into live sports, including the NFL this Christmas and WWE’s “Raw” 52 weeks a year, that number is poised to go up, up, up.

Paramount rounds out the big 6 here. Interestingly — and not coincidentally — Netflix and Paramount+ are the two streamers that allocate big chunks of their budgets to international content. As a matter of fact, most (52 percent) of Netflix’s content spend these days is on non-English-language series and films; 40 percent of the Paramount+ budget is spent on foreign-language programming.

“Ongoing investment by major studios and streaming platforms into new programming will continue to be key to keeping audiences engaged and entertained. We can expect that the content landscape will see low level growth in 2024 as production schedules recover from disruptions caused by the pandemic and the writers’ and actors’ union strikes,” Peter Ingram, the research manager at Ampere Analysis, said in a statement. “Looking forward however, while these top six providers will continue to account for the majority of spend, overall growth will plateau as companies look to refocus their output. This will include limiting commissioning volumes and prioritising (chill, he’s British) strategic investments and profitability to counter the current challenges of the media market.”