Skydance streaming operations face pressure as Pluto TV user base declines

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Skydance streaming faces pressure

Highlights

Pluto TV monthly active users declined to approximately 75 million in Q3, down from 89.6 million in 2025 according to Skydance's earnings disclosure.
Skydance completed its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery and finished the first phase of integrating Pluto TV and Paramount+ technology, aiming to reduce costs and speed product innovation.
Pluto TV's U.S. TV viewing share peaked at 1% in February 2025 before stagnating, while rivals Tubi and Roku Channel increased their shares to 1.9% and 2.9% in August, respectively.

Pluto TV audience decline and platform overhaul

As first reported by Business Insider, Skydance told shareholders on Monday in its third-quarter earnings materials that Pluto TV has about 75 million monthly active users. That compares with 89.6 million monthly active users in 2025, based on an April town hall presentation viewed by Business Insider and attributed to Paramount streaming finance chief Elizabeth Wright.

The earlier internal presentation told employees Pluto TV added 5.4 million users in 2025, implying a 2024 base of roughly 84.2 million. The slides did not specify whether those figures represented fiscal-year averages or year-end totals, while Paramount had previously told investors in May 2023 that Pluto TV reached 80 million monthly active users.

The contraction comes after Skydance completed its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery last month under CEO David Ellison's plan to build a streaming business capable of competing more effectively with Netflix and Disney. In the shareholder letter, Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz said the first phase of the internal "convergence" process is largely completed, with Pluto now running on the same technology as Paramount+ across major streaming platforms.

They said the shared platform lowers operating costs, speeds product development, and creates common personalization and monetization capabilities across free and subscription services. Skydance also said Pluto's September interface redesign, which gives more prominence to on-demand programming rather than its traditional live channels, is already improving the user experience, although two Paramount streaming employees told Business Insider they believe the layout change may have contributed to the drop in monthly active users.

FAST rivals gain share in U.S. TV viewing

Pluto TV entered the free ad-supported streaming TV market early, launching in 2014 around the same time as Tubi, before Viacom acquired it in 2019. Nielsen first included Pluto in its monthly streaming rankings in July 2022, when it accounted for 0.8% of U.S. TV viewing, and its standalone share peaked at 1% in February 2025 before Nielsen began grouping it with Paramount+.

Paramount's combined streaming share stood at 2.3% in August, unchanged from March 2025. Over the same period, Tubi expanded from 1% of U.S. TV viewing in February 2023 to 1.9% in August, while Fox said the service grew from 74 million monthly active users in September 2023 to 110 million as of August.

The Roku Channel has also advanced, rising from a 1.1% U.S. TV share in May 2023 to 2.9% in August, making it the fifth-largest streaming platform by share behind YouTube, Netflix, Disney's streamers, and Amazon Prime Video. Nielsen data also shows YouTube extending its lead sharply, climbing from 5.7% of U.S. TV viewing in May 2021 to 15.8% in August, while Netflix stands at 7.7%, underscoring how scale is shifting toward the biggest streaming ecosystems.

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