In 2024, the top 12 media and entertainment companies achieved a remarkable milestone by reaching a new record for content expenditure, having invested roughly $210 billion—marking a 4% increase from the previous year. This insight comes from a recent analysis conducted by KPMG.
Leading the pack in KPMG’s 2024 rankings for content expenditure is Comcast/NBCUniversal, which allocated $37 billion—a figure consistent with its 2023 spending. The subsequent contenders include YouTube at $32 billion, Disney with $28 billion, Amazon at $20 billion, and Netflix with $17 billion.
Between 2020 and 2024, KPMG indicates that content spending among these major companies has surged at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10%. This growth is largely attributed to traditional media companies increasingly investing in their direct-to-consumer streaming platforms, such as Disney+, NBCUniversal’s Peacock, Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max, and Paramount+.
Despite these significant investments, KPMG’s report suggests that the industry has yet to reach its ultimate content-spending potential. “While some suggest that ‘peak content’ has been reached, we assert that the market is far from saturation,” the report states in its analysis titled “Money in Motion: The Future of Content Spend and Business Models in Media,” released on Tuesday. According to KPMG, “Content spend is not experiencing uniform growth across all formats and genres.” For example, the costs associated with acquiring sports rights continue to rise, whereas investments in scripted and reality programming have leveled off.
“The current landscape transcends merely producing ‘more content.’ We are witnessing a more strategic approach to investments,” asserts Scott Purdy, media strategy leader at KPMG U.S. “The industry leaders are harnessing insights from recent years and leveraging data to make informed decisions regarding content development and financial returns.”
A notable trend highlighted in the report is the increasing emphasis on user-generated content (UGC) and ad-supported models, alongside the continuing proliferation of free, ad-supported streaming services like Paramount’s Pluto TV and Fox’s Tubi. The growth of UGC has significantly outpaced many other sectors and is expected to maintain an upward trajectory, propelled by rising advertising investments and an expanding creator economy, according to KPMG.
The report also delves into the transformative influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on the industry. KPMG predicts that AI will streamline certain aspects of the production process, making it faster and more cost-effective in the long run. In the short term, however, the focus will be on using AI to enhance rather than replace human-driven production processes.
“AI is fundamentally altering the content creation landscape—impacting creation, personalization, distribution, and monetization,” says Frank Albarella, KPMG’s U.S. sector leader for media and telecommunications. “Media executives who strategically experiment with AI today will be positioning themselves for competitive advantages in the future.”
For this report, KPMG gathered information from a mix of primary and secondary sources between April and August 2025. Their estimates of content spending are derived from a select group of large, publicly traded media companies, with comprehensive financial data covering the years 2020 to 2024.
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