From Emmys to Oscars: Streaming Boosts 2025 Awards Ratings Closer to Pre-Pandemic Levels | Analysis

On the heels of a chaotic awards season, one lesson is clear from awards show telecasts: stay on linear and watch ratings dwindle, or expand viewership with a livestream component and see ratings rebound.

The 2025 awards season marked a pivotal moment for streaming. The Oscars were live-streamed for the first time on Hulu, the Grammys and Golden Globes already had live-streaming established on Paramount+, and the SAG Awards marked a second year with a Netflix livestream. And the Emmys are gearing up for a cross-platform telecast on CBS and Paramount+ this September.

Though Sunday’s Oscars faced some technological glitches on Hulu, the ceremony’s first-ever livestream boosted the 97th Academy Awards to its biggest audience in five years. The same was true for the Golden Globes, whose combined viewership across CBS and Paramount+ reached the show’s biggest audience since 2020. The SAG Awards also built on their Netflix viewership from last year, while the Grammys were the only major awards show to shed viewers, as the 2025 show saw a slight downtick from last year.

In the year before their expansion into streaming, the second Emmys of 2024 saw a double-digit percentage increase as the ceremony rebounded from its previous record-low audience in January 2024. (For the purposes of this story, the September 2024 Emmys will be counted as the start of the 2025 awards season.) Viewership information for the Critics Choice Awards, which aired on E! after airing on the CW last year, and Film Independent Spirit Awards, which solely streamed on YouTube, was not available.

Here’s TheWrap’s breakdown of this season’s major award shows and how they fared in viewership:

Oscars

The 2025 Oscars are the best example of how streaming saved awards shows from year-to-year audience declines on linear TV. Initial live-plus-same-day data put the Oscars at 18.07 million viewers across ABC and Hulu, marking a 7% decline from the 19.5 million total viewers brought in by the 2024 ceremony. However, updated figures from Nielsen, which tallied younger viewers on mobile, PCs and tablets, brought the show’s viewership up to 19.69 million — a 1% bump from last year.

That’s the biggest audience the Oscars have seen in five years, and an 89% increase from the show’s pandemic-era record low of just 10.4 million viewers in 2021. Since then, the show has slowly climbed back to its previous viewership, though the Academy Awards are still a ways off from reaching pre-pandemic numbers, with the 2019 show scoring 29.6 million viewers and the 2020 show — which aired just a month before the COVID-19 pandemic hit — reaching 23.6 million viewers.

Numbers from the 2025 show, however, look promising for continued growth, especially once any streaming issues are troubleshooted.

The Academy flaunted its tiny ratings growth — as well as the telecast’s strong social performance — in an email to members, but did not mention it was the first time the show had streamed live.

Golden Globes

Viewership for the Golden Globes tells a similar story to the Oscars: continued growth boosted the show to its biggest audience since 2020, though not enough to surpass pre-pandemic numbers.

The 2025 Globes scored 10.1 million viewers, according to combined viewing figures from VideoAmp — the data service used by Paramount during its contract dispute with Nielsen — and internal data for Paramount+ viewing. While the VideoAmp measurement doesn’t provide a direct comparison to Nielsen measurements for the previous years, Paramount revealed the Globes saw a 9% increase in its streaming audience versus last year.

The 2025 viewership builds on growth from the previous year, when the Globes scored 9.4 million viewers across CBS and Paramount+ — a striking 50% gain from the 2023 Globes, which aired only on NBC to an audience of 6.3 million viewers. Instead of the 2023 show growing from its post-pandemic viewership of 6.9 million viewers in 2021, the show shed viewers in 2023 after notably skipping a 2022 broadcast in the wake of controversy surrounding the Globes’ previous governing body, the HFPA.

Still, the 10.1 million viewers is well behind the 18.4 million and 18.6 million viewers brought in by the 2020 and 2019 shows, respectively, both of which were broadcast on NBC without a streaming component.

SAG Awards

Last year, Netflix’s first livestream of the SAG Awards failed to make it into the streamer’s top 10 most-watched TV list during the week of its debut as well as the next week. While Netflix did not release exact viewing information for the 2024 show, Netflix’s data dump for the first half of 2024 revealed that the SAG Awards tallied up 1.8 million views from its Feb. 24, 2024 debut to June 2024. The 2023 show scored 1.5 million viewers in its first 12 hours across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, while the 2022 ceremony drew 1.8 million viewers during its TBS and TNT simulcast. In 2021, the ceremony hit a record low with 957,000 total viewers.

Likewise, the 2025 SAG Awards did not crack the top 10 TV list for its Sunday livestream, though viewing from the next week (the following Monday through the next Sunday) boosted the awards show into the list. The SAG awards scored the No. 7 spot with 2.6 million views during the week of Feb. 24, already well exceeding viewership in 2024.

Emmys

The Emmys have already regained the show’s pre-pandemic viewership — and that’s before the added livestream for the 2025 show. The second show of 2024, which aired in the Emmys’ typical September slot, drew 6.87 million viewers on ABC alone, up 54% from the 75th awards ceremony the previous January, which scored a record-low viewership of 4.3 million on Fox.

Viewership for the 2024 fall Emmys is just a tad behind the pre-pandemic 2019 show, which scored 6.9 million viewers. With the upcoming September show set to air on CBS and stream on Paramount+, it’s possible the Emmys could surpass their pre-pandemic viewership in 2025.

Grammys

The 2025 Grammys were the only major awards show to shed viewers this season, reporting 15.4 million across CBS and Paramount+, an 8% slide from the 2024 Grammys, which brought in 16.9 million viewers. Despite having Beyoncé’s long anticipated Album of the Year win, the 2025 show signaled audience interest waning on music’s biggest night, especially when compared to the show’s pre-pandemic viewership of 19.9 million in 2019 and 18.8 million in 2020. The Grammys have been telecast across linear and streaming since before the pandemic.

What’s Next?

With all of the major awards shows already having introduced or gearing up for their first livestream component, the ceremonies have armed themselves with the capability to reach their pre-pandemic audience levels. But the key question remains: Will audiences tune in, even with awards shows meeting them where they’re at on streaming. Or are lower viewership numbers the new normal in this age of fragmented viewing?

If it’s anything like live sporting events, which have benefited from finding cord cutters on streaming, there might be hope for Hollywood’s award season celebrations yet.

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