The Academy Awards, as soon as tv’s most glamorous night time, have been hemorrhaging viewers for many years. On Wednesday, the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences introduced a tourniquet: a multiyear deal granting YouTube unique international streaming rights to the Oscars from 2029 via 2033, ending a partnership with ABC that started in 1976 and essentially altering how Hollywood honors itself.
The shift represents a transparent acknowledgment of the ceremony’s diminished grip on American tradition. Oscar viewership peaked in 1998, when 55 million individuals tuned in to look at “Titanic” sweep the awards. The 2025 broadcast, in the meantime, drew 19.7 million viewers—a five-year excessive, however barely a 3rd of that peak.
The Academy had been exploring alternate options as ABC’s contract neared its 2028 expiration, and YouTube’s bid evidently surpassed what conventional broadcasters provided.
“We’re thrilled to enter right into a multifaceted international partnership with YouTube to be the long run dwelling of the Oscars and our year-round Academy programming,” stated Academy CEO Invoice Kramer and Academy President Lynette Howell Taylor in a joint assertion. “The Academy is a world group, and this partnership will enable us to broaden entry to the work of the Academy to the most important worldwide viewers doable—which can be helpful for our Academy members and the movie group.”
That international attain is the guts of the calculation. YouTube boasts greater than two billion viewers worldwide, and the ceremony will stream stay and free to all of them, plus YouTube TV subscribers in the US. The platform will present closed captioning and audio tracks in a number of languages—accessibility options that mirror how youthful audiences devour content material.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan framed the partnership as each preservation and evolution. “The Oscars are considered one of our important cultural establishments, honoring excellence in storytelling and artistry,” Mohan stated. “Partnering with the academy to convey this celebration of artwork and leisure to viewers everywhere in the world will encourage a brand new era of creativity and movie lovers whereas staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy.”
The deal consists of greater than the principle telecast. YouTube positive factors rights to red-carpet protection, behind-the-scenes programming, the Oscar nominations announcement, Governors Ball entry, Academy member interviews, movie teaching programs, and podcasts. It additionally turns into the unique worldwide dwelling for the Governors Awards, Scholar Academy Awards, and Scientific and Technical Awards—ceremonies that beforehand acquired little consideration.
Monetary phrases weren’t disclosed, however the association makes the Oscars the primary of leisure’s “massive 4” awards reveals—the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, and Tonys—to desert broadcast tv fully. ABC will proceed airing the ceremony via 2028, which incorporates the milestone a hundredth Oscars, earlier than ceding the stage.
The transfer underscores a broader migration of stay occasions to streaming platforms. YouTube already instructions the most important share of U.S. streaming tv viewership, in keeping with Nielsen. And whereas Netflix has acquired rights to the SAG Awards, the Oscars represents a much more important prize: Hollywood’s final model.
Trade response has been divided. Some view it as essential modernization. Others see symbolism within the ceremony’s demotion from community tv’s primetime throne to a free platform the place viewers routinely skip pre-roll advertisements. Screenwriter Daniel Kunka captured the anxiousness on X: “Broadcasting the Oscars on YouTube is like shaking fingers with the man who’s attempting to kill you.”
