Estimates suggest that in 2026 U.S. adults will spend around ** percent of their time watching traditional TV each day. This figure has generally fallen in recent years and the downward trend is forecast to continue in the years to come. Screen time Although average daily time spent watching TV appears to be decreasing, this does not necessarily mean that people are spending less time in front of screens; this drop is likely due to an increasing amount of time spent with phones, tablets, and laptops. With on-demand streaming services such as Netflix gaining massive popularity, people can watch a huge range of programming whilst on the go, meaning that screen time is no longer limited to time spent at home in front of the TV. Young people around the world have been especially quick to adopt smartphone-based video streaming habits meaning that television screen time will likely fall even further in the future. Television in the U.S. As mentioned above, the way people are consuming their video entertainment content is rapidly changing in the United States. By 2028, estimates suggest that only **** million U.S. households will pay for traditional TV services, down from over ** million as of 2019. In order to compete for people’s business, cable and satellite providers must find a way to adapt in a way the meets the needs of today’s increasingly mobile consumers. Some are launching their own streaming services in a bid to tackle cord-cutting, most notably Comcast.

In the 2024 season of Major League Baseball, the streaming service MLB.TV recorded a total of 14.5 billion minutes watched. This marks a 14 percent increase compared to the last season's number.

As of September 2024, all streaming services accounted for 41 percent of total TV screen time in the United States. Netflix made up 7.9 percent of the whole viewing time, slightly up from 7.8 percent recorded in the same period of the previous year.

The National Football League (NFL) was the most watched sports league in the United States in 2023. Viewers watched a combined 974.7 billion minutes of football action across the 284 televised games between November 2022 and November 2023. Meanwhile, Major League Baseball (MLB) ranked second with a little less than 330 billion combined minutes from viewers.

How much does a Super Bowl ad cost?

The price of running an ad during the Super Bowl has tripled over the past two decades. In 2024, advertisers paid an average of seven million U.S. dollars to air a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl LVI broadcast. The renowned sporting event is highly anticipated each year and is watched by millions around the world. In the U.S., the 2024 edition of the Super Bowl was watched by over 123 million Americans.

How many people watch the World Series?

Unlike the Super Bowl, MLB World Series TV viewership experienced an overall decrease over the past two decades. The games of the 2023 World Series, in which the Texas Rangers achieved a five-game series win over the Arizona Diamondbacks, were watched by around nine million viewers. This shows a considerable drop from the previous year, when nearly 12 million people tuned in to see the Houston Astros win the Commissioner’s Trophy.

During a 2020 survey of parents in the United States, it was found that children eight years and younger spent 105 minutes a day watching TV, DVDs, or videos. According to respondents, 32 minutes a day was spent reading or being read to. Meanwhile, total screen time for children eight years and younger was 144 minutes a day.

In 2022, the average daily TV viewing time in the U.S. amounted to around ***** hours. While traditional TV is declining in popularity, the time spent watching apps on connected TV devices is growing.

A survey from the first half of 2022 in the U.S. found that baby boomers were the generation that watched linear TV most, with a share of ** percent of the total linear TV consumption time. In comparison, both millennials and baby boomers spent the most time watching content on connected TV devices.

The NFL is one of the most widely televised sporting leagues in the world. The average television viewership of a regular season NFL game in 2024 was calculated to be **** million. Attendance In addition to this record-breaking TV viewership, the NFL attracts thousands of fans to the stadiums each week to see their favorite teams in action. The NFL has consistently been the major American sports league with the highest average attendance, with an average of almost ** thousand people attending each game in the 2023 season. Moreover, during the 2024 regular season, the average total home attendance per team across the entire NFL was calculated to be *******. The franchise with the highest total attendance for its eight regular-season home games was the Dallas Cowboys, perhaps in part to their comparatively reasonably priced tickets, costing nearly *** U.S. dollars on average, just less than the average ticket price across the NFL at *** U.S. dollars per ticket. Best players Since 1957, the Associated Press NFL Most Valuable Player Award has been given to the NFL player considered to have been the most outstanding during the season. Since the award's introduction, Peyton Manning has received the award the greatest number of times during his career, closely followed by Aaron Rodgers, who has received the award on **** occasions. One other potential indicator of the success of an NFL player is their annual salary. The highest-paid NFL player in 2024 was Dak Prescott, quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, who earned **** million U.S. dollars from salary and bonuses and ** million U.S. dollars from endorsement deals during the 2024 season.

As of June 2025, the most popular English-language Netflix TV show of all time was the first season of the comedy horror TV show “Wednesday,” with over 252.1 million views in the show's first 91 days on the platform. The second most watched and latest addition to the top 10 of the streaming platform was the British TV series “Adolescence,” which amassed over 141.2 million views. The fourth season of the American science-fiction series “Stranger Things” follows closely, counting around 140.7 million views. Is high content spending a guarantee for success? The fourth season of “Stranger Things” belongs not only to the most popular Netflix titles, but was also by far the most expensive series for the company as of April 2024, with production costs of 30 million U.S. dollars per episode. In order to stay competitive in the crowded streaming environment, Netflix reported ever rising budgets to produce their own content. With amassing the most viewing minutes in the top 10 of the most watched original streaming series in 2024, it seems the video-on-demand provider has been successful with this strategy. TV series are being canceled quickly For years, the number of original scripted TV shows released in the U.S. has steadily been growing, peaking in 2022 at 600 broadcast, cable, and streaming series. However, in times of originals continuing to soar, streaming services have canceled several TV shows after just the first or second season. Even alleged popular Netflix series such as “1899” or “Warrior Nun” had to go with the story left incomplete, as they fell short of the company’s expectations.

The games of the 2024 World Series, in which the Los Angeles Dodgers achieved a five-game series win over the New York Yankees, were watched by an average of ***** million viewers. This marked the Dodgers' eighth World Series title in franchise history.

Season two's premiere of the post-apocalyptical TV series “The Last of Us” counted 5.3 million viewers across the linear HBO channel and streaming service HBO Max, an increase compared to the first episode of the first season. However, season two's final was watched by only 3.7 million people. The TV show is based on a video game franchise of the same name and was produced by Sony Pictures Television.

In the U.S., sports content is still the most popular on traditional TV, with around ** percent of the viewing time happening via cable, satellite, and over-the-air TV in the second quarter of 2024. However, with more and more consumers opting for streaming options, the time spent watching sporting events on providers, such as Prime Video and ESPN+ is increasing.

How much does a Super Bowl ad cost in 2025? In 2025, advertisers are paying an average of eight million U.S. dollars to air a 30-second long commercial during the Super Bowl LVI broadcast. The Super Bowl is one of the biggest events on the sporting calendar, but it is so much more than just the football being played on the pitch. The spectacle surrounding the event, which culminates in the legendary half-time show, is hotly anticipated and watched by millions around the world. With so many captive viewers before, during, and after the game, advertisers use the Super Bowl as a means of raising awareness for their products. However, this awareness and visibility comes at a cost – since 2017 the average price of a 30-second TV advertisement during Super Bowl stood at a minimum of five million U.S. dollars and has risen even further in the last few years. Super Bowl ads The Super Bowl commercials have become a phenomenon in their own right, with social media buzzing with speculation about the innovative ways in which big corporations will sell their products. A 2020 survey revealed that 79 percent of viewers see the commercials as entertainment, while almost 71 percent stated that they enjoyed watching the commercials. It also seems the viewers will go to some lengths to see these commercials beyond their original air date during the big game – during the 2019 Super Bowl, consumers spent 641 thousand hours watching Super Bowl ads on YouTube, representing a 58 percent increase over the previous year. Large corporations spend big The allure of a Super Bowl commercial spot is hard to resist for big corporations. Some of the largest Super Bowl advertisers in 2021 included Pepsico and T-Mobile, while Anheuser-Busch sat top of the list, spending 52 million U.S. dollars on advertising during the big game. As a result of this big spending, Super Bowl advertising revenue reached a record 485 million U.S. dollars in 2021, more than twice the figure of 2011.

During the 2025 edition of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship, the average TV viewership in the United States stood at **** million viewers. This represented an increase of ***** percent from the previous year.

According to the estimates of the upfront TV advertising spending in the United States, in the 2023/24 broadcast season, primetime TV upfront sales were projected to reach a value of 20.14 million U.S. dollars. This marked a decrease from the previous year's value of 20.14 million dollars. In 2020, due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, upfront TV ad spend fell to 19 million dollars, from the originally sold inventory worth 21.87 million dollars.

Overview

Streaming Services Statistics: Streaming services have transformed the entertainment landscape, revolutionizing how people consume content.

The advent of high-speed internet and the proliferation of smart devices have fueled the growth of these platforms, offering a wide array of movies, TV shows, music, and more, at the viewers' convenience.

This introduction provides an overview of key statistics that shed light on the impact, trends, and challenges within the streaming industry.

The statistic shows figures on the daily viewership of Rio 2016 Olympics in the United States. The Closing Ceremony was watched by 16.85 million viewers. An average minute of the broadcast was watched by four percent of adults aged 18 to 49. In total, 14 percent of the age group tuned in.

Olympics TV viewership – additional information

The Olympic Games is one of the largest events in the sporting calendar, attracting millions of TV viewers when it takes place every four years. The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil drew in an average of 27.5 million primetime viewers in the United States, which marks a decrease of 2.8 million viewers from the 2012 Olympics in London. The Games in 2016 also saw a fall in the number of those who watched the Opening Ceremony. The 26.49 million television viewers who watched the opening ceremony in Rio is a fall from the record 40.7 million viewers who watched the opening of the London Olympic Games in 2012.

During the Olympic Games in 2016, the peak TV viewership figures came on August 9, with 33.63 million tuning in to NBC to watch the day’s action, the equivalent of a 33 percent share. This coincided with a successful day for the U.S. team, with two gold medals being won in the pool and the U.S. women’s gymnastics team taking gold in the Women’s Team Final. August 11 was the only other day during the Rio Olympics that TV viewership topped 30 million, as 31.22 million spectators watched Simone Biles win gold in Women’s Individual All-Around Gymnastics Final, with teammate Aly Raisman taking silver. This day also brought further success for the U.S. team in the pool as the women’s 4 x 200m freestyle relay team took gold ahead of Australia.

The decrease in Olympic TV viewership in 2016 compared to previous years illustrates the increasing use of other digital platforms, with 63 percent of Olympic fans stating that they use their PC/laptop to watch sports coverage in the second quarter of 2016. This means that, by the Closing Ceremony of the Rio Olympics in 2016, over 2.7 billion minutes of Rio 2016 coverage had been live streamed from NBC Olympics digital platforms.

The 35th season of the long-running animated comedy show "The Simpsons" drew in an average of ************ viewers, but whilst this figure may seem impressive at first glance, viewer numbers have been on the decline for years. Season 12 pulled in an audience of almost *********** However, viewership has been falling ever since (with the exception of the small spike in viewer numbers between seasons 20 and 21). As viewer numbers for the show have dropped, so has the cost of a 30-second ad spot during "The Simpsons" broadcasts, though the price for an ad during 2018-19 season showed signs of improvement and marked the first increase in around 4 years. Attitudes towards ‘The Simpsons’ Whilst "The Simpsons" has often come under fire for its controversial content and reinforcement of negative stereotypes, the show continues to run and remains popular. "The Simpsons Movie" made over *** million U.S. dollars at the North American box office in 2007 and the film regularly features on video streaming services alongside the show itself. Even in spite of falling viewer numbers the long-running TV series is still held in good favor, especially among younger generations. "The Simpsons" was the favorite contemporary TV show among Millennials according to a survey held in the U.S., and also performed well with respondents in this age group in a ranking of favorite TV shows of all time.

The Stanley Cup Finals is a championship series in the National Hockey League (NHL) that determines the Stanley Cup winner. In 2025, the average TV viewership was 2.5 million per game in the United States. The previous year, in 2024, average TV viewership in the U.S. amounted to 4.2 million. Which NHL Player has won the most Stanley Cups? The Stanley Cup is the championship trophy awarded annually to the team that wins the NHL playoffs. It is the oldest existing trophy awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, and players are eager to have their team’s name engraved on it. As of 2023, the player with the most Stanley Cup wins of all time was Henri Richard. The centre won 11 Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens between 1955 and 1975. What is the most valuable franchise in the NHL? A team’s franchise value is often based on a combination of factors such as revenue, profitability, brand strength, and team performance. In 2024, the Toronto Maple Leafs had the highest franchise value in the NHL at 3.8 billion U.S. dollars. Following close behind was the New York Rangers, with a franchise value of 3.5 billion U.S. dollars. Alongside being the NHL team with the most Stanley cup wins, the Montreal Canadiens had the third-highest franchise value in the league in 2024.

As of June 2023, “Loki” was the most popular Marvel show on Disney+, with an estimated 2.5 million households watching the series premiere within its first five days. The latest addition to the Marvel repertoire on Disney+, “Secret Invasion,” drew around 990,000 viewers.

The crown jewel of Disney Plus

Walt Disney’s acquisition of Marvel Entertainment not only cemented its position as the most powerful media conglomerate in Hollywood, but also helped pave the way for the company’s success in the streaming realm. By having exclusive streaming rights to the MCU, the highest-grossing movie franchise worldwide, Disney+ can set itself apart from other established competitors such as Netflix. And while many viewers use the service for Disney’s original programming, a large share of surveyed viewers also stated that they subscribed to the service predominantly or exclusively because of its Marvel content.

Disney’s other gems

But which titles draw viewers to the service, other than Marvel? Another major selling point of the platform is its vast and ever-expanding catalog of Star Wars content. Not only do titles from the cult franchise rank among the highest-grossing movies of all time, but as the House of Mouse continues to expand the Star Wars universe at lightning speed, original productions like “The Mandalorian” or “The Book of Boba Fett” are quickly becoming some of the platform’s most sought-after titles.