Bristol, UK, August 10, 2026--Rethink TV, from Rethink Technology Research, has published its latest forecast: the "Global OTT Compendium: SVoD, AVoD, & FAST Market Forecast 2026-2031." The new business models being used make these definitions quite blurred, we must stress, with a few services (Crunchyroll and JioHotstar) proving categorizational headscratchers.
The combined dataset illustrates the scale of YouTube within the results, both in terms of users and viewing time. It also shows that the Chinese services that are primarily AVoD-based are much larger components of the global streaming ecosystem than most people will be aware of. Future work will attempt to fully quantify the scale of video consumed outside of the Media & Entertainment (M&E) ecosystem, as Meta’s platforms and TikTok are significant elements, and much of YouTube’s growth is driven by the popularity of its Shorts service. For now, this resource is still focused on long-form M&E content.
The other major consideration is the increasingly blurred lines that exist between each of these streaming categories. We now have Subscription Video on Demand supported by advertising, Advertising Video on Demand supported by subscriptions, and FAST services that are not just a collection of channels but provide library access to on-demand titles.
Similarly, the on-demand function of these streaming services is increasingly giving way to live video, and that in turn is driving considerable change in the underlying technologies that power these streaming services - chiefly in CDNs, but also in the choice of codecs used to encode the video that is transported through the CDNs.
Within the list of services, there’s been considerable consolidation in the past year or so. In our previous FAST forecasts, we have warned that the market is dominated by two services that are owned by large media firms and that Pluto TV, owned by Paramount, and Tubi, owned by Fox, could be merged into larger services and thus disappear from FAST. With those two services representing over half of the revenue attributed to the FAST market, this is a major concern.
With Paramount Skydance attempting to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, it looks inevitable that Pluto TV will be merged into whatever comes of the combination of the SVoD services. With Fox buying the Roku hardware platform and The Roku Channel ecosystem, there is a similar chance that Tubi and The Roku Channel could be merged too.
Over the next five years, the classifications between each of these services in the compendium will look slightly more arbitrary. We know that some of the FAST services already do not like being called such, because the term has a negative connotation within this industry. Given how much of the FAST viewing time is spent on on-demand video instead of linear channels, there is logic behind this position. For consistency’s sake, we are preserving our historic classifications, but with both the business models and the parent companies changing, this list will look quite different, should anyone be reading this document in five years.
In terms of headline figures, the total revenue seen in the streaming market in 2031 will have surpassed $300 billion. Of this total, SVoD is the largest, while AVoD comfortably behind. Compared to these two, FAST is tiny. Unsurprisingly, Netflix is the most valuable SVoD service. Within AVoD, YouTube is by far the largest single component globally. It accounts for around 58% of total AVoD revenue at the end of the period, and 20% of the total streaming revenue.
Looking at the total annual hours watched globally, this grows from around 2.5 trillion hours in 2026 to nearly 3 trillion in 2031. Despite SVoD accounting for the majority of total revenue, it is worth noting that AVoD is by far the largest category when looking at the amount of video watched. At the end of the period, AVoD accounts for around 72.2% of total video hours.
For more information go to: www.rethinkresearch.biz
