A new report from PwC argues that recently announced mega-deals for media and entertainment companies highlight a shift in the streaming business to “scale and sustainability” and underscore “ renewed confidence” in the media and telecom industries among both strategic and financial buyers who are deploying capital.

The wide ranging study, which covers dealmaking in the streaming, telecom, gaming, sports and media and entertainment industries, noted that “M&A activity saw a marked uptick in the second half of 2025, driven by more favorable financing conditions, strategic portfolio realignments, and a rejuvenated investor appetite for premium intellectual property.”

For the streaming industry, the PwC analysts argued that “after years of expansion, the streaming market is decisively shifting toward scale and sustainability. Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery confirms that the stand-alone platform era is ending, with scale becoming the primary determinant of competitiveness.”

The hefty $82.7 billion price tag for the proposed Netflix deal, also “sets a fresh high-water mark for streaming valuations” and is likely to spur “a new wave of portfolio rationalization” that will put “pressure on other players to streamline operations, shed non-core assets, and secure partnerships for content.

The report also found that sports valuations are surging across the ecosystem for teams and other assets. “The $10 billion Los Angeles Lakers sale set a new benchmark,” reinforcing the importance of “sports intellectual property (IP), live rights, and venue infrastructure.”

PwC also reported that “telecom M&A is gaining momentum around network scale and capital efficiency. “Operators are pursuing fiber carve-outs, tower divestitures, and regional consolidation to fund 5G and AI-driven upgrades,” it said. “AT&T’s $5.75 billion acquisition of Lumen’s mass-market fiber business, covering about 1 million existing and 7 million planned locations, exemplifies this trend,” reflecting “the industry’s focus on capital recycling, asset monetization, and partnership-driven expansion to meet surging connectivity demand.”

The full report is available here.

LONDON—Global entertainment and media industry revenue edged towards $3 trillion in revenue in 2024 and is forecast to hit $3.5 trillion in 2029 as advertising spend surges across platforms, according to PwC’s "Annual Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2025-29."

The report found that the industry is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.7% until 2029 – a rate above the projected global economic growth average, but below pre-pandemic highs.

Economic uncertainty and anemic consumer spending growth, amid heightened domestic and international competition in the industry, is expected to weigh on E&M growth rates through the forecast period until 2029, the report found.

Bart Spiegel, global entertainment and media leader, PwC U.S. explained that “as the E&M industry continues to be impacted by broader economic uncertainty and constrained consumer spending, advertising is emerging as the leading powerhouse of the global entertainment and media industry’s revenues – a transformation expected to continue as AI transforms delivery models, democratizes content production, serves highly curated content experiences, and reduces barriers to entry. The E&M industry has always been at the forefront of technological innovation, but companies will need to remain nimble and proactive to embrace the future and satisfy consumers in an ecosystem that rewards creativity and tailored content.”

The report found that for now, connectivity remains the largest of the three categories (advertising, consumer and connectivity) that PwC focused on, with spending reaching $1.3 trillion in 2029, growing at CAGR of 2.8% and driven mainly by mobile internet service revenue. However, advertising’s pronounced growth rates are set to see the gulf between connectivity and advertising spend rapidly narrow by 2029.

As growth for paid or subscription products slows amid heightened industry competition and constrained consumer spending – particularly in mature markets – advertising is forecast to represent a significant driver of revenue growth for the E&M industry at-large.

PwC projects that of the three major categories covered in the report advertising is expected to grow fastest—three times as fast (6.1% CAGR) as the consumer category (2%).

The fastest growing E&M revenue metrics over the next five years are all advertising driven—including retail advertising (15%), social and mobile on-stream video advertising (15%), and connected TV in-stream internet advertising (14%). Digital formats, which account for 72% of overall ad revenue in 2024, will rise to 80% in 2029, with new technologies including AI and hyper-personalization expected to drive this even further. High growth areas include retail search advertising in e-shopping (rising from 32.7% in 2020 to 45.5% in 2029) and advertising in video games (rising from 32.8% in 2024 to 38.5% in 2029).

One notable factor in the growth of advertising will be AI, which is set to transform advertising models.

AI is impacting the E&M industry in many ways. One of the areas in which it is likely to influence revenue growth is in connected TV (any television that connects to the internet to stream video content). In 2020, connected TV advertising revenue equated to just 5.9% of total traditional broadcast TV advertising. In 2024, this figure had jumped to 22%. But with the rise of digital engagement and the prospect of AI-assisted hyper-personalization, which may lead to greater end-user uptake, connected TV ad revenues will rise to $51 billion in 2029 – equal to 45% of traditional broadcast TV advertising, the PwC report found.

The study also found that non-digital revenue – including live music, events and cinema box office—lead consumer spending. The report also found that while consumers spend more of their free time online, but they continue to spend more of their entertainment budget offline. In 2024, non-digital formats accounted for 61% of consumer revenue—a level of spend expected to broadly continue through the forecast period.

While global cinema box office spending is expected to rise from $33 billion in 2024 to $41.5 billion in 2029, consumers’ preferences are continuing to shift toward locally produced films. Globally, the top five US studios’ market share has dropped from over 60% before the pandemic to 51% in 2024.

Finally, the study found that the global video gaming industry continues to be an engine of E&M growth, with the global video games market exceeding the movie and music industry combined. Total revenues were $224 billion in 2024, with the industry expected to grow to nearly $300 billion in 2029 at a CAGR of 5.7%.

Excluding connectivity revenues (e.g., mobile service subscriptions), the US comfortably leads as the world’s largest E&M market by revenue. It is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 3.8% until 2029 – lagging below the global average of 4.2%. Looking elsewhere, E&M revenues in China—the second largest market – will rise at a CAGR of 6.1%, powered primarily by its internet advertising segment, with a CAGR or 8.9%. The fastest growing markets globally continue to be in developing markets, including India and Indonesia, all with CAGRs above 7.5%. In India, much of the growth will stem from internet advertising – which is growing at a CAGR of 15.9%—driven by expanding internet penetration, rising 5G connectivity, and the popularity of social media and short-form video content.

“Consumers have never had as numerous or diverse choices of entertainment services on offer, but this competition, paired with economic uncertainty and rising costs, is seeing consumer spend growth stagnate,” Wilson Chow, global technology, media and telecommunications leader, PwC China. “If entertainment and media businesses are to capture new audiences and generate growth, they must be thinking about the connected ecosystems in which they operate, leveraging the power of advertising and AI, the combination of which is allowing for far more cost-effective and personalized content creation and engagement models.”

NEW YORK—Despite a economic headwinds and cutbacks in podcasting efforts by some media companies, podcasting continues to be one of the fastest growing digital channels, growing two times faster than digital advertising overall, according to IAB’s "U.S. Podcast Advertising 2022 Revenue & 2023-2025 Growth Projections" study. 

The seventh annual IAB U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue study, prepared for IAB by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), found that 2022 podcasting ad revenue was up 26% year over year to 1.8 billion. The report also predicts that revenues will more than double by 2025 to $4 billion. 

The report found that Sports, Society & Culture, and Comedy are now the top revenue-generating content genres, with Sports snapping up 15% of podcast advertising, followed by Society & Culture (14%), and Comedy (14%). Meanwhile News and political opinion content fell from a 19% share to 12%.

“In-person sports, lifestyle events, and in-store shopping have come back in a big way, taking the lead from news which held the top revenue genre spot since 2018,” said Eric John, vice president, Media Center, IAB. “Podcasting revenue naturally reflects that shift in consumer behavior and it will be interesting to watch how the balance changes going forward.”

The researchers also found that podcasting continues to evolve as an ideal medium for niche audiences, attracting advertisers in a wide range of categories including Advocacy, Education, Home Improvement, and beyond. These smaller categories, collectively, are driving 28% of all revenues.

“Both mass and niche advertisers like the audiences, targeting, and ROI along with the brand-safe and suitable environments that podcasting offers,” added John.

The full report can be accessed here. 

NEW YORK—Building on strong growth in 2021, when global media and entertainment revenues increased by 10.4% to $2.3 trillion, PwC is predicting further growth in many areas between 2022 and 2026, with OTT revenue growing 7.6% a year to $114.1 billion by 2026 while traditional TV continues to decline, dropping 0.8% a year to $222.1 billion. 

The new PwC data showed that OTT video surged another 22.8% in 2021, pushing global revenues to $79.1 billion last year. After that, however, the pace of OTT revenue growth will moderate somewhat; it is expected to grow at a 7.6% CAGR through 2026, pushing revenues to $114.1 billion.

Traditional TV, beset by competition from OTT streaming services, still generates considerable revenues, but its inexorable decline will continue, with global revenues projected to shrink at a -0.8% CAGR from $231 billion in 2021 to $222.1 billion in 2026, PwC is predicting.

These are findings are from PwC’s "Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2022-2026", the 23rd annual analysis and forecast of M&E spending by consumers and advertisers across 52 countries and territories.

The report also predicts that the growth of content on digital platforms is fueling massive data consumption, with 2.6 million petabytes (PB) of data consumed in 2021. That consumption is expected to rise at a 26% CAGR to reach 8.1 million PB by 2026. 

Gaming will be the fastest-growing data consumer over the forecast period, with a 29.6% CAGR expected. Mobile handsets will be the fastest-growing device category between 2021 and 2026, increasing at a 28.8% CAGR and expected to push mobile data consumption up from 1.1 million PB to 3.8 million PB.

The report also predicts that global video games and esports revenue totaled $215.6 billion in 2021 and is forecast to grow at a 8.5% CAGR to $323.5 billion in 2026. Asia Pacific generated the lion’s share of revenues in 2021 with $109.4 billion, almost double North America, the second highest region. Gaming is now the third-largest data-consuming  E&M content category, behind video and communications.

VR continues to be the fastest-growing M&E segment, albeit from a relatively small base.    

Global VR spend rose by 36% y-o-y in 2021 to $2.6 billion, following on the hot 39% growth in 2020. Growth between 2021 and 2026 is expected at 24% CAGR, bringing the segment to $7.6 billion. Gaming content is the primary contributor to VR revenue, taking  in $1.9 billion in 2021. This should increase to $6.5 billion in 2026, 85% of total VR revenue.

Advertising’s spread throughout the digital world has made it a dominant industry category.  After a decline of nearly 7% in 2020, advertising grew an impressive 22.6% in 2021 to $747.2 billion. 

Driven almost entirely by digital, advertising is set to grow at a 6.6% CAGR through 2026.  Internet advertising revenue is seen growing even faster, expanding at 9.1% CAGR.  In 2026, advertising is projected to be a $1 trillion market and the largest M&E revenue stream, having surpassed consumer spending and internet access.

PwC also found that global cinema revenue is bouncing back, reversing its pandemic-driven losses, and is expected to reach a new high of $46.4 billion in 2023.  Box office revenue is projected to reach $49.4 billion in 2026 from $20.8 billion in 2021, an 18.9% CAGR. China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest cinema market in 2020, and is expected to retain this leadership through 2026.

Digital music- streaming subscriptions are driving growth in the recorded music sector where revenues are forecast to rise from $36.1 billion in 2021 to $45.8 billion in 2026

At a regional level, North America commands by far the highest E&M spend per capita, at $2,229, nearly double Western Europe’s $1,158. 

By contrast, Asia Pacific, which was the largest M&E region by revenue in 2021 at $844.7 billion, has per capita spend of $224. The Middle East and Africa have the lowest per capita M&E spend of any region globally, at $82. 

The top ten growth markets by CAGR, meanwhile, are focused in Latin America, Middle East, Africa and Asia, with OTT video and gaming providing the majority of revenue growth, and esports and cinema seeing fast growth as well.  Turkey (estimated 14.2% CAGR), Argentina (10.4%), India (9.1%) and Nigeria (8.8%) are top-ranked for E&M consumer spend growth prospects over the five year forecast period.

LONDON—As companies struggle to establish new ways of working in the wake of pandemic lockdowns and the current spike in COVID-19 cases, a new survey from PwC suggests that many employees would like to continue to work remotely while company leaders worry about the impact of remote working on the company culture and innovation and high rates of turnover. 

The “PwC US Pulse Survey: Next in Work” conducted in August found that competition for tech, media and telecom talent is as fierce as ever, with more than 90% of tech, media and telecom (TMT) leaders reporting higher-than-usual turnover. 

The survey also found widespread concern about the future of work. Most TMT leaders (76%) reported that they’re concerned about sustaining corporate culture in a hybrid workplace environment at their companies, and more than 65% are concerned about loss of innovation and mentoring opportunities.

In response, senior TMT executives are trying to compete for talent by shoring up career development opportunities (47%) and offering flexible schedules (49%), the survey found. 

Among employees in all industries, the survey found that many wanted to continue with at least some remote work, with 19% favoring working completely remotely, 8% favoring working remotely four days a week, 17% favoring three days of remote work and 12% two remote days. Another 22% favored working almost entirely from the office and 21% said their work did not allow them to work remotely. 

The survey also broke out results among CTOs and CIOs in all industries, not just TMT, and found that top technologists were more concerned about the future of work than other executives. 

Technology chiefs, for example, are more worried than their peers in terms of figuring out which groups of workers should come into the office in person, how often they should do this and when, the report noted. While 37% of the technology executives cite this as a major challenge, only 22% of all the other executives did so, the report said. 

Tech leaders are also more concerned about not having the appropriate technology tools to support hybrid work, compared with all executives in the survey (28% versus 19%), the report said. 

A number of CIOs also worried that hybrid work would hurt in-person corporate culture (26%), have an impact on revenue growth (26%) and cause managers to treat on-site and remote workers differently (26%). 

Other concerns included have effective cybersecurity measures in place for hybrid work (23) and the negative impact it might have on innovation (22%).

CIOs and CTOs ranked data privacy, cybersecurity and compliance concerns at the top of the list of technology challenges they face with the hybrid model, with 43% calling it the biggest challenge they face.

Other challenges with hybrid work included digital upskilling (36%), balancing the tech-driven experience of remote and on-site workers (34%), an increase in shadow IT (33%), degraded or inconsistent IT support services (25%), lack of clear ownership over technology investments (25%), inability to scale up/down IT resources as needed (24%) and inability to demonstrate value of technology investments (24%). 

To improve hybrid work, about half of the technology executives surveyed (49%) cited analytics to drive better decision-making as their top priority, the report said.  

Other priority areas are security by design (37%), cloud-centric operating models (36%) and AI to personalize products, services, experiences (33%). 

The survey also contains a wealth of data from other industries. 

In the results from all industries, the survey found that 65% of employees were looking for a new job and that 88% of executives reported that they were seeing higher than usual turnover. 

Two thirds of both executives and employees favored a vaccine mandate as a precondition to returning to work. 

The full report is available here. 

LONDON—The pandemic pushed the media and entertainment into its worst performance since PwC began tracking global revenues in the 1990s, with 2020 seeing a 3.8% decline of about $81 billion in revenue.  

The new edition of PwC’s annual “Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, 2021-25” predicts a 6.5% rebound of revenue in 2021. But the recovery is coming from a lower base and the compound average growth rate (CAGR) growth rate for a six-year period to 2025 will be “a less optimistic picture with a rate of just 3.5%.”

“More than a year into the most globally disruptive event of most consumers’ lifetimes, COVID-19 remains the unavoidable force driving the dynamics of the media and entertainment industry,” the Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, 2021-2015 explained. “Although uncertainty persists due to varied vaccination rates and the risk of resurgent waves of infection from new variants of the disease, we forecast that the combination of vaccines and more developed virus control systems should support a tentative return to normal for most developed nations in the second half of the year.”

The outlook varies, however, by sector. “While sectors like cinema, live music, and trade shows suffered unprecedented setbacks, the persistent growth of digitization softened the blow for the broader industry,” the report noted.

This was particularly good for OTT video and internet access. Globally, about 1.1 billion households had fixed broadband in 2020 and there were an additional 4.6 billion smartphone connections, with total data consumption increasing by 30% during 2020.

In contrast to the whole industry, the new PwC report found that 2020 “was a year of extreme growth for OTT video,” with global revenues growing by more than $12 billion in 2020. 

Total OTT video revenue will be nearly $94 billion by 2025, PWC predicts, a 60% pop in the five-year period beginning in 2021. But PwC sees slower growth in 2021, “due to a combination of a reduction in demand and an exhaustion of the customer conversion pipeline.” Globally, growth in OTT will decrease from 29.4% in 2020 to 13.2% in 2021.

Traditional TV and home video will however 1.2% CAGR decline to 2025, with ongoing declines in TV subscription revenue.

TV advertising also faces challenges, with PwC predicting that “broadcast revenue will not recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2025.” A bright spot is that online ads for TV content and connected TV advertising will grow by $22.6 billion to nearly the same level as multichannel advertising by 2025.  

Meanwhile, total internet access revenues will increase at a 4.9% CAGR to $880 billion in 2025, “as consumer demand and increasingly ubiquitous access drives growth,” the report noted. 

Mobile internet advertising will hit $332.3bn, or 67.9% of total internet advertising revenue by 2025.

LONDON—As major economies recover from the pandemic, PwC is reporting that companies announced 410 deals worth around $83 billion in the media and telecom sectors during the six months ending on May 15.

That is a big turnaround from only 32 deals in the first half of 2020. 

Two big drivers were the massive investments required by 5G and a pivot to streaming. The “increasingly competitive dynamics in 5G and streaming [are] poised to drive M&A in 2021 and beyond,” PwC noted. 

One example of that was AT&T’s decision to unwind its acquisition of WarnerMedia by merging the assets with Discovery. 

“This announcement was the biggest sign yet that telecom giants were reversing course on their plans to expand into the media space,” the report noted. “It followed on the heels of Verizon’s disposal of HuffPost and Yahoo/AOL, T-Mobile’s discontinuation of its TVision streaming service and AT&T’s own spinoff of DirecTV into a joint venture with TPG Capital.”

“Given the simultaneous rise of 5G and streaming, both sectors have become increasingly competitive and require more investment in the near term,” the report noted. “As a result, many telecom giants are opting to exit media in order to double down on building out their 5G networks. We expect the demand for 5G capabilities — including fiber and broadband, cell towers and other technologies — to consume significant amounts of capital for telcos in the coming years.”

As the streaming wars heat up, other media companies have “turned their attention to content acquisition,” the report also noted. “The announced merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery brings together complementary scripted and non-scripted content to leverage across the company’s platforms, while Amazon’s announced acquisition of MGM Studios for $8.45 billion will bolster Prime’s catalogue with key franchises and a deep content library. As these media giants compete with the likes of Netflix and Disney, we expect to see a continued race for content and sports rights, as well as further consolidation among other streaming providers and studios as they seek the scale needed to remain competitive.”

However, the digital disruption brought on by COVID-19 and shifting consumer behaviors have produced a decline in broadcasting and cable deals, PwC noted, thanks in part to the growing popularity of streaming and accelerated cord-cutting.

“Players in the media and telecom sector are starting to feel the stress brought on by the enormous capital requirements needed to compete and maintain relevance during this period of transformation, leading to a wave of asset reallocation,” noted Bart Spiegel, media and telecom deals partner at PwC. 

The report is available here. 

LONDON—Traditional TV is heading for uncharted territory according to PwC’s “Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019-2023,” a forecast that would see a dip in TV’s compound annual growth rate for the first time.

Covering 14 industry segments in 53 territories, PwC’s “Outlook” projects that global spending on entertainment and media will increase at a CAGR of 4.3% by 2023, increasing the industry’s global revenue to $2.3 trillion. However, traditional TV is not expected to be one of the industry segments contributing to that growth.

Traditional TV, coupled with home video, has a negative growth expectation in the time frame covered in the PwC study. The rise of cord-cutting is a key factor in this, as OTT video is the projected to be the second largest contributor to the CAGR behind virtual reality, part of consumer’s desires to have personal, curated entertainment and media experiences.

“Advances in technology and service offerings are finally enabling people to move from passive to active consumption—not just individual pieces of media, but of media as a whole,” PwC writes. “One is the trend for consumers to reject the bundles of channels offered by cable or satellite providers, and instead construct their own ad hoc bundles made up of OTT services.”

Global OTT revenue is expected to double from what it was in 2018 ($38.2 billion) by 2023.

The emergence of 5G could also play a factor in the fight between traditional TV and OTT, as one of the key impacts of 5G will include the streaming of more high-quality video for live sports or other events.

Read the full PwC report here.

LONDON—The global sports industry is suffering from more disruption than ever before, according to the latest PwC report.

The 2017 edition of PwC’s annual Sports Survey stated that, as a result of ongoing shifts in media consumption, the emergence of new technologies and a rapidly evolving sponsorship market, the industry’s growth rate will slow by more than 32 percent in the coming three to five years.

However, it is predicted that the industry will grow by an average of 6.4 percent over the same period.

The report states that, due to the rise of the smart phone, along with the growth of high-speed internet throughout many countries, consumption habits have shifted ‘irreversiby’ away from linear programming, particularly among millennials.

PwC listed the top three disruptive forces in the sports media market as the ongoing proliferation of new platforms; an expansion of mobile internet and ubiquitous access to sports content through mobile devices; and rights holders changing their distribution strategies to establish direct relationships with fans.

The increasing interest in sports rights among big tech companies such as Facebook and Amazon has been one of the top trends in sports media of late, and PwC’s report notes how these firms are set to play an even more forceful role in rights auctions in the coming years.

The report cites Facebook’s recent acquisition of streaming rights to UEFA Champions League football from Fox Sports in the U.S., as well as Amazon’s recent purchase of rights to the National Football League (NFL) and ATP World Tour, as signs that both companies are getting more serious about sport.

This story first appeared on TVT's sister publication TVB Europe.