YouTube overtakes Disney in annual media revenue

Just over 20 years after it was founded, YouTube has committed the ultimate act of lèse-majesté by knocking Disney off its own turf.

Who could have predicted that the modest video-sharing platform launched in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim would reach this point two decades later? When Google bought YouTube the following year for “just” $1.65 billion, some commentators believed the company had made a mistake and paid far too much for the acquisition.

History proved them wrong. The deal has become one of the company’s most successful investments: YouTube is now the second pillar of its advertising empire, bringing in $9.8 billion in the second quarter of 2025. That dominance has now been confirmed by the defeat of the Burbank group’s media division, which has been pushed into second place for annual revenue.

YouTube becomes the untouchable leading media group

The figures were published by research firm MoffettNathanson, the Rolls-Royce of financial analysis in the TMT sectors: technology, media and telecommunications. In 2025, YouTube generated a staggering $62 billion in revenue.

On the other side, The Walt Disney Company’s media arm has been overtaken, despite encompassing film and television content production, distribution, international sports rights and its streaming services - Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. The gap is narrow: Disney generated $60.9 billion in the same year. Yet, while relatively modest, it now sets a benchmark beyond the reach of every other player in the industry.

YouTube’s low-cost model versus Disney’s production spending

Disney must contend with astronomical production costs to deliver its series and blockbuster films, alongside marketing and distribution expenditure. YouTube, by contrast, operates through an entirely different model: a vast army of creators uploads millions of videos each year, continuously feeding the platform’s advertising machine.

The platform’s estimated standalone value is equally dizzying. Analysts believe that, if YouTube were an independent business, it would be worth between $500 billion and $560 billion. It would therefore rank ahead of Netflix - the leader in subscription video-on-demand streaming - which remains well behind at a current value of $409 billion.

Advertising and diversification drive YouTube revenue

According to MoffettNathanson’s figures, advertising accounts for roughly 64.5% of the platform’s total revenue, amounting to $40 billion, including $11.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone.

The remainder, more than $21 billion, comes from highly aggressive diversification. The company has won over television fans with YouTube TV, secured exclusive NFL Sunday Ticket rights - the holy grail for American football fans - sold Premium subscriptions in huge numbers, and drawn music lovers in with YouTube Music. It has built a unique infrastructure for aggregating content that it does not even need to produce: a highly lucrative income stream that has only grown over the years.

For Michael Nathanson, an analyst at MoffettNathanson, this rise is unprecedented in the entertainment landscape. “Unlike almost all the assets we cover, we are convinced that YouTube will benefit both from growth drivers and from the structural crises currently affecting the technology and media sectors,” he explains. Even if the advertising market were to falter, or the entire world suddenly lost interest in television, YouTube appears almost immune. Over 20 years, few sectors have withstood the platform’s advance, and it now forces Disney to watch the competition from the second step of the podium.