The biggest non-sports program in all of entertainment is moving exclusively to streaming in a deal that figures to have at least some implications for sports television.
Google-owned YouTube has acquired rights to the Academy Awards beginning in 2029, it was announced Wednesday. As with the Youtube-exclusive NFL game earlier this year, the Oscars will be available to watch for free on YouTube globally and with a subscription to YouTube TV.
The Oscars will continue to air on longtime home ABC through 2028.
In acquiring the Oscars, YouTube will own exclusive rights to one of television’s annual staples. While its viewership is closer to “Thursday Night Football” than the Super Bowl, the event is on a short list of mass cultural gatherings that includes the Super Bowl, Olympics and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Realistically, streamers have in recent years carried a handful of exclusive NFL games that perform at or above the present-day level of the Oscars (albeit including local over-the-air simulcast viewership in the home markets). Oscars viewership topped the 40 million mark as recently as 2014, but has never fully recovered from the post-COVID malaise that sank audiences across television. Viewership has been under the 20 million mark for five consecutive years.
But given its status in American culture, the acquisition may be the most significant yet for a digital platform. And it is hard to imagine that a YouTube that annually airs the Oscars would not be in the mix for any number of iconic cultural events in sports television. Rights to the Super Bowl and Olympics are locked up into the start of the next decade.
As for Disney, the loss of the Oscars is mitigated at least somewhat by its acquisition of the Grammys, which will begin airing on ABC and Hulu in 2027. It remains to be seen if Disney will devote the same kind of all-encompassing attention to the Grammys that it has for the Oscars, regularly clearing out its sports programming to avoid any possible preemption.
