Last updated on March 4th, 2026
Media industry analytics organization Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) has released its report on 2025 US home video revenue. Overall, home video revenue clocked in at $62.2 billion in 2025, up by 17.4% from 2024.
Below are my thoughts on the current state of things for digital and physical media.
2025 US home video revenue
Here’s DEG’s infographic listing their figures. There’s some changes from last year’s report, to reflect the popularity of ad-based subscription streaming services.
Explaining the categories:
- Physical product: DVD and Blu-ray sales (I assume rentals are irrelevant/virtually nonexistent by now).
- Electronic sell-through (EST): digital sales through iTunes, Amazon, etc.
- Video on demand (VOD): digital rentals.
- Subscription video on demand (SVOD): ad-free streaming service tiers for Netflix, Disney+, etc.
- Hybrid SVOD: ad-based streaming service tiers for Netflix, Disney+, etc.
- Aggregate SVOD: The total for ad-based and ad-free streaming service tiers.
Free ad-supported (FAST) services like Tubi, Pluto TV, etc. aren’t included in the totals, since, well, they’re free. However, DEG estimates advertising revenue at $22.8 billion in 2025, about even with 2024.
By percentage of revenue (with rounding):
- Subscription video on demand (SVOD): 75.8%
- Hybrid SVOD: 16.6%
- Electronic sell-thru (EST): 3.6%
- Video on demand (VOD): 2.6%
- Physical product: 1.4%
Digital media
As usual, streaming is the norm for home video, making up 92.4% of all revenue, up 19.8% over 2024. Most of the growth is from ad-based subscription services, which are up 60.9% from 2024 (versus ad-free tiers up 13.4%).
The ad-based tiers are cheaper than the ad-free tiers, of course; the hefty price hikes on the latter doesn’t help. Of course, the ad-based tiers are more lucrative, thus why those are heavily pushed. Basically, double-dipping on revenue like cable—charge for the service and also make money from advertising?
Digital sales and rentals are down from 2024. DEG blames this in part on theatrical film releases’ weaker state in the latter part of the year.
Physical media
As usual, DVD and Blu-ray sales are no longer driving things, with physical media making up only 1.4% of all home video revenue. Sales declined less badly than in previous years (by 9.3%), however, which DEG attributes to 4K Blu-ray sales for collectors being up over 2024.
That said, there’s been anecdotes about a recent rise in some people buying physical media again, including DVDs and Blu-rays. Much of this seems to be those buying used discs, which wouldn’t show up in DEG’s figures. The “retro” push is driven by people wanting something physical to own, as well as annoyance with the state of streaming services. So maybe 2026 physical media sales won’t decline by as much as 2025 sales? If vinyl records of all things can somehow make a comeback, I suppose a DVD revival’s possible, despite my previous doubts about nostalgia for such.
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto (Pexels)
