In our January 2025 retrospective on distribution models, we made a specific call. AVOD and FAST platforms, we wrote, "continue growing as alternatives to SVOD, but face sustainability questions due to fragmented revenue streams." Sixteen months later, the question is answered. Free streaming services pulled in $4.9 billion of revenue in 2024 and grew viewing hours 43% year over year. The fragmentation is real. It is also, increasingly, where the growth lives.

This is what the 2024 to 2025 revenue data says about where the streaming money actually moved, and what it means for any distribution operation built on the assumptions of the SVOD era.

SVOD: still huge, increasingly opaque

At the top of the streaming pyramid, the absolute numbers remain enormous. Netflix passed 300 million paid subscribers globally and then, at the end of 2024, stopped reporting subscriber numbers altogether. Disney's combined Disney+ and Hulu subscriber base sits at 195.7 million. Warner Bros. Discovery's Max generated $2.65 billion in quarterly direct-to-consumer revenue, with global ARPU at $7.44. Apple TV+ and Prime Video, holding hundreds of millions more viewers between them, do not publicly disclose at all.

The pattern matters more than any single number. Subscriber growth is plateauing across the board, ARPU is regional and volatile, and the platforms have stopped competing on disclosure. When Netflix announced it would no longer report subscriber metrics, that was not a footnote. It was a tell. The growth story inside SVOD has migrated to ad-supported tiers (Netflix Ads, Disney+ Ads, Prime ad-supported), which are themselves increasingly indistinguishable from AVOD by another name.

In our earlier post on the insatiable demand for content, we argued that streaming platforms had locked themselves into a content arms race they could not afford to slow down. That argument has aged well. What it underestimated was how quickly the platforms would diversify their monetization model to keep paying for it.

AVOD and FAST: smaller pool, moving fast

Below the SVOD layer, the picture is louder. Free streaming services, the bucket that includes AVOD platforms (Tubi, Pluto TV) and FAST platforms (The Roku Channel, Samsung TV Plus, Freevee), reached $4.9 billion in revenue in 2024. The category is on a trajectory to $9 billion by 2029. The broader global FAST market is forecast to grow from approximately $10.6 billion in 2025 to $12.23 billion in 2026.

The platform-level numbers fill in the shape:

• Tubi crossed roughly $1 billion in ad revenue in 2024 with 100 million monthly active users.
• Samsung TV Plus crossed 100 million MAU in January 2026, reportedly generating $700 to $750 million in advertising revenue annually.
• The Roku Channel hit a record 3% share of total US TV viewing time in December 2025.
• FAST now represents 5.7% of all US TV viewing time, with 45% of US households watching FAST content regularly.

None of these are SVOD-scale revenue numbers in absolute terms. All of them are on faster trajectories. We covered the technical foundation back in our 2024 guide to MRSS and HLS for FAST, and we wrote about the underlying viewer behavior shift in how the most connected generation challenges traditional content distribution. What we did not say then, and what the 2024 data now makes obvious, is that the operational shape of this category looks nothing like SVOD.

The operational gap nobody talks about

In the SVOD era, a distributor's day-to-day was structured around a small number of premium counterparties. You negotiated a Netflix deal, a Prime Video deal, a Disney+ deal. Each one was a multi-month conversation, a complex contract, a high-touch delivery, and a meaningful single-line revenue contribution to the quarter. Operations were built for that economics: bespoke avails per counterparty, manual royalty reconciliation, custom delivery specs negotiated case by case.

The AVOD and FAST shape is the opposite. Tubi, Pluto, Roku, Samsung, LG, Vizio, Plex, Xumo, Crackle, Freevee, Sling Freestream, Local Now, plus regional FAST channels and increasingly device-OEM-specific marketplaces. Each one needs its own avails feed, its own EMA delivery package, its own royalty reconciliation cadence, its own metadata profile. Each one individually represents a smaller line item. Aggregated, they are the growth engine.

We have written about each piece of that operational mismatch. Almost everyone does avails wrong. The problem with traditional avails systems. Stop pitching the same titles to Amazon Prime. What changed in 2024 and 2025 is that these stopped being good-hygiene problems and started being revenue problems. A distributor who cannot deliver into 50+ FAST destinations is not just operating inefficiently. They are leaving the fastest-growing revenue category on the table.

That is why Molten Cloud now ships into 100+ delivery platforms natively. Not because we predicted FAST in 2020. Because the buyers told us, year over year, that the operational model the SVOD era left behind was not going to fit what came next.

What this means for Cannes 2026 buyers

Marché du Film 2026 is happening as I write this, May 12 to 18 at the Palais des Festivals. The contracts being negotiated this week, by my team and by every other distribution executive on the Croisette, will dictate four-year revenue trajectories. The buyers and sellers who walk in with a clear point of view on hybrid windows (theatrical to SVOD to FAST) and territory-by-territory FAST availability will walk out with materially different deal economics than the ones still negotiating like it is 2021.

The thesis we made in January 2025 about spreading risk across multiple distribution avenues was, in retrospect, conservative. The actionable version for Cannes 2026: assume FAST and AVOD are now a primary window, not a secondary salvage market. Build your contracts and your operations around that assumption from day one. The financing data we published last month already showed how concentrated the production side has become. The distribution data published in this post completes the picture.

If you are at Marché this week, come find us. Mehdi Mimouni and I are on the ground through May 18.