Spring 2026 - Industry Sourcebook

Magazine Features

Streaming Year in Review 2026

Two stories dominated streaming media in 2025: Netflix versus the rest and YouTube takes TV. YouTube may be the bigger story.

Streamticker: The Biggest Streaming Mergers and Acquisitions of 2025

Here is a month-by-month roundup of the streaming industry's most momentous mergers and acquisitions of 2025 (excluding the competing Paramount Skydance and Netflix bids for Warner Bros. Discovery—a drama that just turned definitively in Paramount's favour at press time).

The State of Media & Entertainment Streaming 2026

In last year's The State of Media & Entertainment Streaming, I wrote about the likelihood of studios and platforms with fewer subscribers than the big three (Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Disney) having to collaborate or merge to reduce the costs of content creation and acquisition while growing their userbases in 2025. As predicted last year, some of this movement has begun to happen, but not necessarily with the smaller players.

The State of Shoppable Live TV 2026

In 2025, shoppable live content began to come of age in Europe. Having already achieved massive success in Asia over the last few years, the concept had struggled to gain a foothold in Europe as a viable option for retailers and brands. This changed in 2025, as major platforms and brands began to put significant resources behind the shoppable live concept.

The State of Sport Streaming in Europe

Sport streaming in Europe has entered a new phase. The question is no longer whether live sport can be delivered online at scale. That problem has largely been solved. What now defines the market is something deeper, more structural, and more emotional. The real challenge is how sport streaming becomes sustainable, differentiated, and emotionally resonant in a landscape that is more fragmented, competitive, and complex than at any point in its history.

The State of Streaming Codecs 2026

Streaming codec adoption used to be an engineering abstraction governed by RD curves, BD-rate tables, and roadmap slides that no one outside of R&D ever considered. Over the last 15 months, codec adoption decisions have morphed into a much broader discussion, involving C-level execs from finance and legal. While the precursors to this transition occurred pre-2025, the situation coalesced in 2025. During the same period, we saw one codec step to the front (AV1) and another shrink before our eyes (VVC).

The State of Streaming Monetisation 2026

How are streaming content companies doing? Publishers, creators, and aggregators have traditionally made the majority of their revenue on subscriptions, so why does everyone want to talk about advertising? Ad-supported content is more affordable. Because most streaming consumers have maxed out their subscriptions, leaving the SVOD market saturated, advertising is more likely to be the dominant incremental revenue driver for streaming over the next several years, based on how media companies are talking about themselves and guiding investors.

The State of Streaming Sustainability 2026

Is it still fashionable to be sustainable, even with AI?