Jakub Zerdzicki
2025 Became Streaming’s Biggest Year Ever — and the Numbers Are Staggering
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The way audiences consume entertainment just reached a new peak, and the numbers tell a story worth paying attention to.
On Jan. 28, Nielsen announced the winners of the 2025 ARTEY Awards, the company’s second annual recognition celebrating the titles that captured the most collective attention across streaming platforms.
But beyond the individual winners, the data reveals something striking about where entertainment consumption is heading.
The streaming surge by the numbers
According to Nielsen, audiences spent an estimated 16.7 trillion minutes streaming in 2025. That’s equivalent to about 277.6 billion hours, 11.6 billion days, and over 31.7 million years of combined viewing time.
To put that in perspective: if one person tried to watch everything that was streamed in 2025, they’d need to start during the Oligocene epoch to finish today.
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This marked an increase of 19% in time spent streaming compared to 2024, which totaled nearly 14 trillion minutes. It also marks the most heavily streamed year on record, according to Nielsen.
The acceleration is notable. A 19% year-over-year jump suggests streaming isn’t just maintaining its position as the dominant entertainment medium—it’s still gaining ground.
What Nielsen’s ARTEY Awards actually measure
The ARTEY Awards—named after Nielsen’s founder, Arthur C. Nielsen—stand for “Audience Rated Television Entertainment of the Year.”
Unlike awards determined by critics or industry panels, these recognize pure audience engagement measured in minutes watched.
According to Nielsen, the awards serve as “a way to recognize TV’s powerful ability to engage and resonate with broad and diverse audiences, and celebrate what truly defines the cultural conversation.”
This year’s awards included the inaugural ARTEY for Streaming Icon of the Year, which “recognizes a creator, actor, producer or writer whose vast body of work drives significant, sustained viewership across platforms,” per Nielsen.
Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s ARTEY Award winners.
Top Overall and Top Acquired Streaming Title: Bluey
The Australian animated series continues its dominant run on Disney+, ranking as the most-watched streaming title of the year and most-watched acquired title for the second consecutive year.
Bluey accumulated 45.2 billion minutes of streaming on Disney+, which was 4.3 billion more minutes than Grey’s Anatomy (40.9 billion minutes).
This follows Bluey’s impressive win last year with 55.62 billion minutes, per Nielsen.
The show’s continued dominance suggests something interesting about viewing habits: family-friendly content with genuine cross-generational appeal can outperform prestige dramas and buzzy limited series when measured by actual time spent watching.
Top Streaming Original: Stranger Things
Netflix’s sci-fi phenomenon accumulated 40.08 billion minutes thanks to the release of its final season, which came out in three parts (first four episodes on Nov. 26, next three episodes on Dec. 25, and finale on Dec. 31).
Here’s where the data gets interesting: Nielsen’s 2025 calendar ended on Dec. 28, so those numbers don’t reflect the series’ finale.
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Despite that truncated measurement window, 65% of its total watch time (25.1 billion minutes) came from that impressive (and highly-anticipated) five-week period at the end of the year.
The show outperformed Netflix’s Squid Game, which had 22.2 billion minutes of streaming on Netflix last year.
Top Kids Movie: KPop Demon Hunters
Despite being categorized as a kids movie, KPop Demon Hunters appealed to people of all ages and became a cultural phenomenon.
Following its premiere on Netflix in June, it charted in the Streaming Top 10 in 25 consecutive weeks.
The film had a total of 20.5 billion minutes watched, outperforming Moana 2 with just 9.4 billion minutes on Disney+.
Twenty-five consecutive weeks on the charts represents remarkable staying power in an environment where most content cycles through audience attention within days.
The film’s cross-demographic appeal—officially kids content that drew viewers across age groups—reflects a trend worth watching: the most successful streaming content often defies traditional audience categorization.
Top Streaming Movie (General): Happy Gilmore 2
This was the first year Nielsen separated its movie category into two audiences (kids and general).
With KPop Demon Hunters winning the kids category, it was Happy Gilmore 2 that won the general audience with 7.1 billion minutes watched.
The sequel debuted on Netflix at the end of July 2025 and immediately set a new weekly viewing record for a streaming movie, per Nielsen.
Runner-up was Wicked with 6.8 billion minutes on Peacock and Prime Video.
The nostalgia factor appears strong here—Happy Gilmore originally released in 1996, meaning the sequel arrived nearly three decades later.
Most-Binged Title: Gunsmoke
In perhaps the most unexpected category winner, Gunsmoke—the Western drama that originally aired from 1955 to 1975—more than doubled its total minutes from 2024 (10.2 billion to 22.5 billion).
The show, which has a total of 404 episodes available to stream on Paramount+, Pluto, and Peacock, averaged a whopping 241 episodes per viewer.
For context, American Dad! was the runner-up with 143 episodes per viewer on Hulu.
Gunsmoke was a contender for Nielsen’s Legacy Award last year, and its surge this year suggests something about how deep catalog content performs on streaming platforms.
With 404 episodes available, the show offers the kind of extensive viewing experience that keeps audiences engaged over extended periods—a different value proposition than limited series or single-season shows.
Streaming Icon of the Year: Seth MacFarlane
Seth MacFarlane takes home the inaugural Streaming Icon of the Year award.
His catalog of TV series and films generated more than 60 billion viewing minutes across all platforms—which equates to roughly 116,000 years of time spent streaming in 2025 alone.
Some of his best-performing shows include Family Guy (ranked as 7th most watched streaming title in 2025) and American Dad! (No. 3 most-watched adult animation streaming title in 2025).
“I want to thank Nielsen for this Streaming Icon Award,” said Seth MacFarlane, per Nielsen. “It’s a high honor to receive the first prize in show business that isn’t determined by quality.”
MacFarlane’s self-deprecating acceptance quote aside, the numbers reflect something real: his body of work has generated the kind of repeat viewership that compounds over years.
Family Guy premiered in 1999, American Dad! in 2005. Both continue accumulating billions of minutes annually, demonstrating how animated comedies with large episode counts can become streaming staples.
What Nielsen’s data reveals about the future of streaming
Looking across the winners, a few trends emerge for those tracking where entertainment is heading.
Catalog depth matters. Whether it’s Gunsmoke’s 404 episodes, Seth MacFarlane’s decades of content, or Bluey’s growing library, shows with extensive back catalogs generate the kind of sustained engagement that compounds over time.
Cross-demographic appeal wins. Stranger Things and KPop Demon Hunters both succeeded by attracting viewers beyond their nominal target audiences. Content that can’t be easily boxed into a single demographic tends to accumulate more total minutes.
Nostalgia remains powerful. Happy Gilmore 2 and the continued performance of legacy content suggest audiences respond to familiar properties, particularly when they deliver on expectations established decades earlier.
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Other ARTEY winners include The Pitt (Top New Original – Drama) with 11.4 billion minutes, Running Point (Top New Original – Comedy) with 5.1 billion minutes, and Sean Combs: The Reckoning (Top New Original – Unscripted) with 4.8 billion minutes.
For anyone curious about where cultural attention concentrates, these numbers offer a data-driven map of what actually captures audience time—regardless of critical reception or social media buzz.
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