In August 2025, Paramount+ stunned the streaming world by announcing a $7.7 billion exclusive U.S. deal for UFC rights, starting in 2026 — a clear signal that live sports is becoming one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the OTT wars. At the same time, Netflix revealed its 2025 content budget will reach $18 billion, even as it scales back on content licensing and original productions and starts shifting toward high-visibility events. Meanwhile, Disney is merging Hulu with Disney+ and refining its content offer, emphasizing quality and cost control over volume. These moves raise key questions: As SVOD and AVOD platforms compete in an era of economic pressures, how are their content libraries evolving — in terms of size, exclusivity, origin of production, and perceived quality? Can platforms still win by betting on volume and remain profitable? Netflix’s catalog is larger than Disney+ and Hulu combined * excluding live content (Sports, news programs or daily talk-shows) In terms of titles available on its service, Tubi leads the US market by far, with more than 52k titles, nearly doubling its closest competitors, The Roku Channel and Prime Video. The dominance of those AVOD platforms in catalog size reflects their aggregation model, which relies on vast libraries of licensed content at low cost. By contrast, SVOD giants like Netflix, MAX, Disney+ or Hulu offer smaller yet more curated catalogs, focused on original and premium productions rather than volume. Yet, with close to 10k titles, Netflix’s catalog is almost 4 times as big as Disney+’s catalog in the US, and 2 times as big as Hulu. Other services launched by major US studios like HBO Max and Paramount+ also rank below Netflix. US streamers are optimizing their catalogs to reach profitability Also, if streaming services once competed by building ever-larger catalogs to fuel subscriber growth, many have now shifted strategy toward profitability and selectivity. Indeed, catalog growth has slowed across most platforms. Post-pandemic, only Hulu, The Roku Channel, and Amazon Prime Video sustained growth into 2025, while MAX and Tubi showed declines. Paramount+ recorded only a modest uptick after several quarters of downsizing, a shift that accelerated as Paramount completed its merger with Skydance and refocused on cost discipline. This reflects a broader move from volume to quality: platforms are pruning underperforming titles and optimizing licensing spend. Netflix, while still investing heavily (around $18B content spend for 2025, an increase of ~11% over 2024), shows more modest catalog growth and is experimenting with live and sports-event programming. The CFO recently emphasized on “spend smarter, not just more” in its Q3 2025 earning call. For instance, it streamed high-visibility events like the Jake Paul vs. Tyson fight and Canelo vs. Crawford, added NFL Christmas Day...
