And The Winner Is…. Samba TV Oscars Analysis

2024 was a big year at the box office, with cinephiles going gaga for Poor Things and Barbenheimer taking America by a storm. But were this year’s hits Kenough to drive up Oscars viewership? We took a look at trends surrounding the event, along with viewership of the nominated movies pre and post-ceremony to show how streaming is impacting one of Hollywood’s biggest days of the year.

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Oscars viewership reaches a high point

The Academy Awards show on March 10 drew an audience of 13.6M U.S. households, outpacing the 2023 event by 2% and 2022 by 18%, indicating that interest in the Oscars is continuing to build. 

So who was watching? Older, white, high income audiences over-indexed based on viewership of the Academy Awards, consistent with prior years, with baby boomers (A65-74 households) over-indexing by 18%. Diverse audiences were more likely to skip the program, perhaps impacted by continuing criticism of the award ceremony’s lack of diversity, with Black and Hispanic households both under-indexing. 

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Which movies won out in months leading up to the Oscars?

All of the Best Picture nominations were available on VOD or SVOD platforms ahead of the 2024 Academy Awards, which was great news for couch-aholics across the country. Of the movies nominated for Best Picture, Barbie drove the highest lifetime viewership with 26% of that viewership occurring post-Oscar nominations. Oppenheimer, however, ended up taking home the Best Picture win and the win for highest viewership since nominees were announced. This high viewership was undoubtedly impacted by its Peacock release on February 16 that fell after the nominations were announced, in addition to the movie’s major award wins at the season’s biggest ceremonies like the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, SAGs, and the BAFTAs.

In general, the movies available on SVOD platforms drove higher viewership than the movies that were only available for paid VOD, highlighting how the ease of SVOD drives many people to watch. 

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Poor Things takes the cake for highest post-awards viewership

In the week after the Oscars, Poor Things - which Emma Stone won Best Actress for - drove the highest viewership of the Best Picture nominations. Coming in second was Oppenheimer, which won Best Picture and saw its lead, Cillian Murphy, win Best Actor. Poor Things’ beneficial streaming release timing happening just before the Oscars likely impacted its high viewership following the Oscars. 

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American Fiction (which won Best Adapted Screenplay) also saw heightened interest after the Oscars. Between when the nominations were released on January 24  and the week before the Oscars, the movie ranked as the seventh most viewed Best Picture nomination. Following the Oscars, it climbed up the rankings to fifth, surpassing viewership of Past Lives and Killers of the Flower Moon. 

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