A new streaming ranking flips the order of Skydance’s two services just as the company prepares to bundle them and stop reporting subscribers.
Skydance now owns the sixth- and seventh-ranked subscription streamers in America, and the order just flipped. Parks Associates’ annual Top 10 list, built on estimated U.S. subscribers through September 2026, puts HBO Max at No. 6, one spot ahead of Paramount+.
Netflix held No. 1 for a second straight year. Its reach climbed to 67% of U.S. internet households, up from 64% a year earlier, Broadband TV News reported. Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+ and Peacock filled out an unchanged top five. Apple TV, YouTube Premium and ESPN Select closed out the list.
The more telling number sits further down the release. Some 54% of U.S. internet households now pay for five or more subscription video services, yet Parks says household video spending is relatively stable. Michael Goodman, Parks’ director of entertainment research, put it plainly: providers “cannot assume that more subscriptions will translate into more spending.” Ads are filling the gap, with 58% of Disney+ subscribers and 69% of Hulu subscribers on ad-supported tiers.
That is the backdrop for Skydance, which closed its Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition on Oct. 6 and came out of it with roughly $87 billion in gross debt, TheDesk reported from its third-quarter results. Paramount+ ended September with 82.2 million subscribers. Together with HBO Max, the company counts 203 million worldwide, a figure that counts anyone paying for both services twice.
Skydance plans to launch a Paramount+ and HBO Max bundle next year. Starting in February 2027, it will also stop disclosing quarterly subscriber totals. Parks frames the post-merger questions as content strategy, bundling and pricing, plus how much the company can spend on streaming growth while carrying that debt. Once the disclosures stop, anyone tracking the two services will lean harder on outside estimates like this one.
Sources
- Parks Associates – Top 10 List of US SVOD Services; HBO Max pushes past Paramount+ – https://www.parksassociates.com/blogs/press-releases/top-10-list-of-us-svod-services-with-netflix-holding-the-top-position-for-the-second-year-in-a-row-hbo-max-pushes-past-paramount
- Broadband TV News – Netflix retains US streaming lead as HBO Max overtakes Paramount+ – https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2026/11/11/netflix-retains-us-streaming-lead-as-hbo-max-overtakes-paramount/
- TheDesk – Skydance revenue rises 5 percent during Q3, before WBD acquisition – https://thedesk.net/2026/11/skydance-paramount-q3-2026-earnings-report/
Featured photo: Erik Mclean / Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License.
Leave a Reply