Who Spends Most on Content: Company Filings Compared

Why content budgets are hard to compare

Films, series, live sport and licensed libraries are the single largest cost for every big media and streaming company. Yet no two groups report that cost in the same way. Netflix publishes the cash it pays for content, Comcast reports an expense line called programming and production, Amazon gives one figure for video and music combined, and Disney states a planning number in its earnings commentary. Apple publishes nothing at all.

This report uses only those company disclosures. It ranks the groups on their fiscal 2025 figures, explains what each measure includes, follows the Netflix cash and expense lines since 2021, and compares content costs with revenue. It does not repeat the detailed Netflix and Disney series covered in our separate reports on Netflix content spending over time and on the Disney content budget.

Industry-wide totals do exist, but they come from consultancies rather than the companies. KPMG estimated that twelve large media and technology groups spent about $210 billion on content in 2024, and Ampere Analysis has forecast global content investment of about $255 billion for 2026. Both are third-party estimates built on their own definitions and are not used in the charts below.

The 2025 ranking, measure by measure

On the figures the companies themselves publish, Comcast is the largest content spender, followed by Disney, Amazon and Netflix. Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox complete the list. The order is clear at the top, but the gaps between the middle names are smaller than the differences in method, so the chart should be read as a ranking of disclosed content costs rather than a like-for-like league table.

Comcast leads on every reading: its $34.95 billion programming bill is about $12 billion larger than the next company.

Groups with broadcast networks and big sports contracts still sit at the top, because sports rights are the most expensive content anyone buys. The technology companies differ sharply: Amazon now reports a larger figure than Netflix pays in cash, while Apple and Alphabet publish nothing comparable.

Cash spend, amortization and expense: three different numbers

A film or series is paid for over months or years before it is released, and its cost is then spread across the period in which it earns money. That creates three different numbers. Cash spend is what leaves the bank in a year. Amortization is the part of past and present spending charged to the income statement that year. Expense lines such as programming and production can also include fees paid to carry other channels, sports production and other running costs.

When cash runs ahead of amortization, a company is building a pipeline of titles that will reach its income statement later. When the ratio falls below one, the company is releasing more than it is paying for, which is what happened at Netflix during the 2023 Hollywood strikes. The three companies that disclose both lines show how different the positions were in 2025.

Netflix and Paramount are building ahead, Warner Bros. Discovery is not: only WBD invested less cash than it expensed in 2025.

Netflix paid about 8 percent more cash than it amortized in 2025 and has guided to a ratio of about 1.1x for 2026. Paramount Skydance, which is ramping up its film slate and new Paramount+ originals, was at a similar level. Warner Bros. Discovery spent slightly less cash than it expensed while it prepared for a sale, which fits the reduction in its content bill described below. How Netflix carries the unexpensed balance on its balance sheet is covered in our analysis of Netflix content assets.

What each company disclosed for 2025

Comcast. The NBCUniversal and Sky owner reported consolidated programming and production costs of $34.95 billion in 2025, against $37.03 billion in 2024. The line covers far more than films and series: it includes sports rights for NBC and Sky, Peacock originals and the fees Comcast pays other networks to carry their channels on its cable and Sky platforms. The 2024 figure included the Paris Olympics, while late 2025 added the first months of the new NBA contract. Peacock ended 2025 with 44 million paid subscribers and full-year revenue of $5.4 billion.

Disney. In its fiscal 2025 results released on 13 November 2025, Disney said it expected to invest about $24 billion in content across Entertainment and Sports in fiscal 2026, an increase of $1 billion on the prior year, which puts fiscal 2025 at about $23 billion. Disney cited lower Entertainment spending after the Star India transaction, and said the higher 2026 budget would fund sports rights at ESPN and new and existing film franchises. Segment detail and the longer history are covered in our separate Disney report.

Amazon. Amazon does not split Prime Video from music, but its annual report states total video and music expense of $22.4 billion for 2025, up from $20.4 billion in 2024. The figure covers produced and licensed series and films, MGM, Thursday Night Football, the NBA package that began in the 2025 to 2026 season and music licensing. Amazon total net sales were $716.9 billion, so content is a small share of the group, a point picked up in the ratio section.

Netflix. Netflix paid $17.71 billion for content assets in 2025 (additions of $17.10 billion plus a $0.61 billion reduction in content liabilities), compared with $17.00 billion in 2024, and booked $16.42 billion of amortization. Its cost per title is analysed in our ranking of the most expensive Netflix originals per episode.

Paramount Skydance. The company formed on 7 August 2025 reports 2025 in two parts. Amortization of content costs and participation and residuals expense was $8.05 billion for the predecessor period to 6 August and $6.03 billion for the successor period, $14.07 billion combined. Revenue for the two periods added up to $28.89 billion. Paramount+ reached 81.6 million subscribers by mid-2026, as tracked in our Paramount+ subscriber data.

Warner Bros. Discovery. Content rights amortization and impairment fell to $11.86 billion in 2025 from $13.95 billion in 2024, and revenue fell to $37.30 billion from $39.32 billion. The cash flow statement shows a $11.40 billion outflow for film and television content rights, games and production payables. Global streaming subscribers rose to 131.6 million, as shown in our data on Warner Bros. Discovery streaming subscribers.

Fox. Fox does not publish a single content figure in its earnings release. Its operating expenses, which consist mainly of sports rights amortization, entertainment programming and news production, rose to $10.52 billion in the year to June 2025 from $9.09 billion, driven by higher sports rights costs including Super Bowl LIX. Total revenue reached a record $16.30 billion.

Outside the United States. Few European broadcasters publish a content total in dollar-comparable form. ITV, the largest commercial broadcaster in the UK, guided in March 2026 to total content spend of around 1.225 billion pounds for 2026, a year that includes the expanded World Cup for men. Its total revenue in 2025 was 4.12 billion pounds.

Netflix: cash spend against amortization, 2021 to 2026

Netflix is the only large company that publishes both its cash content spend and its content amortization every quarter, which makes it the clearest case study of how the two lines move. Between 2021 and 2025 amortization rose every year, from $12.23 billion to $16.42 billion, while cash spend swung with production cycles and the 2023 strikes.

The gap is closing: cash ran 43 percent above amortization in 2021, fell below it in the 2023 strike year and was 8 percent above it in 2025.

The 2026 guidance explains the widely quoted figure of about $20 billion. Netflix did not publish a cash budget in dollars; it said content amortization would grow by about 10 percent and that cash spend would be about 1.1 times amortization. Applied to 2025, that gives roughly $18.1 billion of amortization and close to $20 billion of cash. The first quarter of 2026 was in line: additions to content assets were $4.85 billion against $3.55 billion a year earlier, and amortization was $4.22 billion against $3.82 billion.

Netflix also says it aims to grow content spend more slowly than revenue, which is why its operating margin is guided to rise to 31.5 percent in 2026 from 29.5 percent in 2025. The full history of these lines back to the DVD era is in our Netflix cost of revenues series, and the commitments not yet on the balance sheet are listed in our report on Netflix content obligations.

Who raised and who cut content spending in 2025

Comparing each company with itself avoids most of the method problems, because the definition stays the same from one year to the next. On that basis, 2025 split the industry in two. Amazon, Netflix and Fox spent more. Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery spent less, for different reasons.

Two directions: Fox and Amazon added the most, while Warner Bros. Discovery cut its content expense by 15 percent.

At Fox, the increase came from sports: the company hosted Super Bowl LIX in February 2025, and big events lift the year in which they are broadcast. Amazon added almost $2 billion, with the NBA arriving on Prime Video in October 2025. At Comcast the fall mainly reflects the absence of an Olympic Games in 2025, partly offset by the NBA, which pushed up Peacock programming costs in the fourth quarter.

The Warner Bros. Discovery cut is the sharpest. Revenue fell 5 percent and content amortization 15 percent, as the company reduced linear network programming and prepared to split into two companies before agreeing to a sale. Comparable spending patterns across streaming platforms can be followed in our tracker of SVOD commissions by US companies.

The sports contracts behind the budgets

Sports rights explain much of the difference between the biggest spenders and the rest. Leagues usually sign long contracts, paid season by season, and most do not publish the price. The table and chart below include only deals where the league or the seller stated the value officially; widely reported values that were never confirmed, such as the 11-year NBA agreements signed with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon in 2024, are left out.

Per year, UFC is the richest: $7.7 billion over seven years is about $1.1 billion a season, double the previous UFC agreement on the TKO account.

Several patterns follow from these contracts. Comcast carries two of the largest commitments, the Olympics through NBCUniversal and the Premier League through Sky, which is one reason its programming bill is the biggest. Netflix has moved into sport through event-style rights, such as WWE Raw, the NFL Christmas Day games and selected Major League Baseball events, rather than full regular-season packages. Its Christmas NFL audience is analysed in our NFL on Netflix viewing data.

Paramount made the boldest move of 2025. Its UFC deal, which moved every event to Paramount+ and CBS from January 2026 and ended the pay-per-view model in the US, is part of the more than $1.5 billion of incremental programming investment the company planned for 2026. ESPN, by contrast, reduced its UFC and Formula 1 rights while extending its NBA and WNBA agreements.

Content cost as a share of revenue

Dividing content cost by revenue shows how much of each dollar earned goes back into programming. The ratio depends heavily on how diversified a company is: Disney earns a large share of its revenue from theme parks and cruises, Comcast from broadband and wireless, and Amazon from retail and cloud computing, which pulls their ratios down.

Pure media companies spend a third or more of revenue on content: diversified groups such as Disney, Comcast and Amazon sit far lower.

Netflix, which earns almost all of its revenue from streaming, spent 39 percent of revenue in cash on content in 2025, down from 59 percent in 2021, when cash spend of $17.47 billion compared with revenue of $29.70 billion. That steady fall is the main reason the Netflix operating margin has risen. Revenue by region is broken down in our Netflix revenue data.

For Disney the picture changes when parks are excluded. Against the combined revenue of its Entertainment ($42.47 billion) and Sports ($17.67 billion) segments, where the content is actually used, the roughly $23 billion budget equals about 38 percent, close to the Netflix level. For Amazon the small ratio says more about the size of its retail and cloud businesses than about Prime Video. Segment revenue for Amazon is shown in our Amazon revenue by segment report.

Paramount Skydance has the highest ratio among the companies that report a pure content line, at almost half of revenue, because its amortization figure also includes participations and residuals paid to talent and unions. Fox is higher still, but its figure is total operating expenses, so the ratio overstates pure content cost.

YouTube and Apple: the two big gaps in the data

YouTube is often placed near the top of content spending tables, but Alphabet does not report a content cost for it. What YouTube does publish is how much it pays out. In September 2025 the company said it had paid more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies globally over the previous four years, and in October 2025 it said it had paid the music industry $8 billion in the twelve months to June 2025.

Those payouts are mostly a share of advertising and subscription revenue, paid after the content earns money, rather than an upfront investment in programming. They are not a content budget in the sense used for Netflix or Disney and are therefore excluded from the ranking. On a simple average, the four-year total equals at least $25 billion a year, but YouTube has not published an annual figure. Audience data are in our YouTube statistics hub.

Apple does not disclose spending on Apple TV, its films or its sports rights, including Major League Soccer and, from 2026, Formula 1 in the United States. Estimates circulating in the press come from analysts, not from Apple, and are not used here. The same applies to many private and state-owned groups, so a complete global ranking is not possible from official sources alone.

Outlook: budgets rise again in 2026

Most companies that give guidance plan to spend more in 2026, after two years of restraint following the 2023 strikes, though the rises are modest, generally single digits in percentage terms.

Corporate change will reshape the 2026 figures. Comcast completed the spin-off of most of its cable networks into Versant Media Group in January 2026, which removes their programming costs from the Comcast line. Warner Bros. Discovery ended its agreement to sell its studios and HBO Max to Netflix in late February 2026 after accepting an offer from Paramount Skydance, and Netflix received a $2.8 billion termination fee. If the Paramount deal closes, two of the seven companies in the ranking will report as one.

Live sport will be the main swing factor. The 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America, the second year of the NBA contracts and the first UFC season on Paramount+ all fall in 2026. Viewers will see the result in subscription prices, which are tracked in our comparison of subscribers by streaming platform, and in the profit of streaming units covered in our direct-to-consumer segment financials.

Content spending in eight numbers

Questions about content budgets at media and streaming companies