YouTube Secures Exclusive Oscars Rights Starting in 2029

The Academy is framing the move as a global access play. The ceremony will stream live and free on YouTube worldwide, with a U.S. viewing option through YouTube TV. The package is bigger than just the main telecast, too. YouTube gets the red carpet, behind-the-scenes coverage, and Governors Ball access, plus other Academy events like the nominations announcement, Governors Awards, Student Academy Awards, Scientific and Technical Awards, and more.

There’s also a “film-fan hub” angle baked into the partnership. Google Arts & Culture will work with the Academy to provide digital access to select Academy Museum exhibitions and help digitize parts of the Academy Collection, which the Academy describes as the world’s largest film-related collection.

Why the Oscars Are Making the Jump Now

This move is happening for one obvious reason: audience behavior has changed, and awards shows have been chasing viewers for years.

In the U.S., the Oscars’ declining viewership hit a modern low in 2021, then climbed back into the high teens in the following years, topping out around the 19–20M range recently. That’s a decent rebound compared to the pandemic-era slump, but it’s still nowhere near the late-1990s peak, when the show pulled in more than 50M viewers.

So the Academy is betting that YouTube’s default audience makeup helps solve their biggest long-term problem: younger viewers are not building their media habits around broadcast TV. Even when they care about movies and pop culture, they tend to follow the conversation through clips, creator commentary, highlights, and shareable moments, not a three-plus-hour TV appointment.

What Viewership Could Look Like on YouTube

The tricky part is that “ratings” will stop meaning one clean number.

On ABC, the Oscars were largely judged by Nielsen-style TV audiences. On YouTube, you’ll also have platform metrics like concurrent viewers, total views, watch time, and how many people engage with highlights after the fact. That creates a scenario where the Oscars could look “bigger” culturally even if the live U.S. audience stays roughly flat.

A realistic expectation is that YouTube helps the Oscars stabilize, and possibly nudge up, the U.S. live audience simply by removing friction: it’s free, it’s global, and it’s already where a lot of entertainment attention lives. If YouTube can keep the U.S.-style audience consistently above ~20M, that would already be a clear win compared to most of the last decade. The bigger growth story may come from international viewing and from the days-long afterlife of clips and creator-led coverage that broadcast TV never fully captured.

Can YouTube Handle an Oscars-Sized Livestream?

From a pure scale perspective, YouTube has already shown they can deliver massive live events.

A helpful reference point is sports: in 2025, YouTube streamed an exclusive NFL regular-season game globally for free, and reports put the average audience north of 17M. That is not the Oscars, but it is a strong stress test for live, high-stakes viewing where audiences show up at the same time, expect a clean stream, and complain loudly if anything breaks.

The Oscars also fit YouTube’s strengths in a way traditional TV never did. The ceremony is the main event, but the modern “product” is everything around it: red carpet arrivals, backstage reactions, speeches, fashion breakdowns, and post-show analysis. YouTube is built to bundle all of that into one place and keep viewers watching before and after the awards.

Because the Academy says the Oscars will stream live and free on YouTube worldwide, the expectation is broad international access, but any geoblocking or country-specific restrictions would depend on the final rights and distribution details closer to 2029.

What This Means for Broadcasters & Other Award Shows

For broadcast networks, losing the Oscars is symbolic and practical. Symbolic because it’s one of the last truly iconic entertainment telecasts. Practical because live events are one of the few things that still reliably deliver real-time audiences and premium ad dollars.

The bigger industry question is whether this becomes a domino. We have already seen major shows experiment with streaming-first distribution, and the Oscars jumping completely off broadcast raises the pressure on every other major awards property. If YouTube can make the Oscars feel bigger, younger, and more global, it will absolutely encourage streamers and Big Tech platforms to pursue rights to the Emmys, Grammys, and Golden Globes the next time those deals come up.

At the same time, this is not automatically bad news for broadcasters. Networks may respond by doubling down on what they still win: sports, news, and event programming with deep advertiser relationships. But the Oscars-to-YouTube leap is a clear signal that the “default home” for big cultural moments is up for grabs now, and traditional TV no longer owns that lane by default.

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