Last year was a massive success for Warner Bros. Discovery’s content – but maybe not so much for its financials.
Sure, the company had nine consecutive theatrical releases open at No. 1 at the box office, 30 academy award nominations and 131.6 million global streaming subscribers.
However, WBD’s total revenue still declined 5% last year to $37.2 billion in 2025. The company blamed this on poor comparisons to the 2024’s Paris Olympics content licensing deals in global markets, and on declines in domestic TV audiences.
Revenue for Q4 also declined, as it did for three out of four quarters last year (and during the prior year, too). It was down 6% year over year at $9.5 billion.
No wonder that, even after accepting Netflix’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. in December, the company is still willing to entertain offers from Paramount Skydance.
Content? Discovery!
Ironically, the Discovery side is what appears to be dragging revenue down – meaning, the part of the business that Netflix would not be acquiring if their deal goes through.
Both distribution and advertising revenue were adversely affected by declines in domestic linear TV subscribers, per the earnings statement WBD released on Thursday morning. In particular, advertising revenue was down 7% to $1.7 billion in Q4, and down 10% to $7.3 billion for the full year.
For the quarter, 4% of that decline can be attributed to the loss of the NBA to NBCUniversal. However, WBD is choosing to spin this as a cost savings measure – now, the company can reinvest all that money into College Football playoffs and the upcoming TNT streaming app, according to its shareholder letter.
Accounting for those NBA headwinds, there’s been “some real health in terms of underlying audience deliverability,” Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels told investors on the company’s earnings call.
“We can see some real stability, potentially, even a little bit of growth in ad sales going into 2026,” Wiedenfels said.
HBO to the Max
Meanwhile, streaming is still going gangbusters, even if it doesn’t represent a huge chunk of the business (yet?).
The segment is up another 5% for the quarter to $2.8 million, and 5% for the whole year to $10.9 billion.
Streaming advertising also rose a healthy 18% for the quarter for $278 million, even while taking a similar 3% hit from the NBA’s absence. That loss, apparently, was offset by an increase in ad-lite subscribers.
For the full year, streaming advertising grew 21% compared to 2024 and finally cracked $1 billion in annual revenue.
WBD saw this growth despite its relative nascency in streaming ad sales and fill rates in international markets being “relatively low,” said JB Perrette, CEO and president of global streaming and games.
“We talk about this all the time, that we went from not good to good,” Perrette said. “But we’ve still got a ways to go to get to great.”
