Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. The current state of streaming feels like Everything Everywhere Always At Once.

The Biggest Dogs in Streaming Want You to Use Only Their App
Source: The New York Times
August 24th, 2026

Summary: YouTube, Roku, and Netflix are all copying Amazon's playbook of selling other streaming services through their own app, which is being called “third-party subscriptions.” 

YouTube just struck a five-year deal to fold Peacock into YouTube Premium (which costs $16/month) starting early next year. Netflix, long resistant to this concept, added a French broadcaster in June and has held early talks with Peacock and Fox One. Third-party subscription sales are up 19% year over year through The Roku Channel (Roku’s proprietary app).

The shift is about user retention. A few years ago, streamers were fighting for new sign-ups, but now they are trying to hold onto subscribers and become the default app on people's TVs. Users aren’t necessarily signing up for an app because it allows them to stream other services. But perhaps users are staying on an app longer, and not cancelling, if they can stream other services right there.

Overall third-party subscription sales are up ~60% over the last three years, now making up a third of all new streaming sign-ups. Amazon Prime Video leads with 49M+ third-party subs sold. Disney remains a holdout, selling their subscriptions almost entirely direct-to-consumer.

Opinion: Streaming apps initially proliferated and fragmented. Now content is getting commodified and everyone's in land grab mode. Eventually it’ll consolidate into a handful of players. The current land grab is a precursor to consolidation, and we’ve been seeing it play out in the form of M&A and bundling. Third-party subscriptions are just another flavor of the same movement, but there’s a lower barrier to entry for all parties involved and it works a little more cleanly from a financial perspective. If you’re Paramount+, why not just offer your streaming service within Amazon Prime Video if it gives you more eyeballs and more subscription revenue? Sure, you pay a fee to Amazon, but it’s a worthwhile exchange. This will likely happen more, as we move towards true consolidation and consumers demand more simplicity from their streaming experience. 

The more interesting question is: who wins? Some streaming services will concede and deliberately become “distribute everywhere” apps (like Paramount+). Others will try to become “everything” apps by trying to sell other streaming services, bundling, or buying up IP (like YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and The Roku Channel). A couple of them will win. And a couple will lose.

As most content becomes available everywhere, we believe the following four factors will determine winners and losers in the race to become the “everything” streaming app:

These factors won’t have an equal impact on who wins and who loses; some will matter more than others. Also, there are a bunch of other factors to consider, e.g. who has a head start, who creates the most frictionless “everything app” UX, who has the lowest prices, who is combining live TV with video-on-demand, whose brand is the most powerful, etc. Despite all of these caveats, we’re still going to make a scoreboard, because, who doesn’t love a good scoreboard?

Oh, and we forgot about Apple, a complete wildcard in this race.

Place your bets carefully!

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