Does AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer feel as though they’re taking a risk by moving the awards ceremony to YouTube in 2029?
“It almost feels risky not to do it,” said Kramer at the Zurich Film Festival Summit event on Saturday afternoon.
In a talk titled “The Theatrical Box Office Resurgence! How to Get Audiences’ Attention in the Era of Social Media and Online Platforms?”, Kramer was joined by Backrooms filmmaker Kane Parsons, president and chief content officer at Mattel, Robbie Brenner, and co-president at Sony Pictures Classics, Michael Barker.
Following Kramer’s keynote speech at the Swiss summit, he doubled down on taking the Oscars — which has aired on ABC in the U.S. since 1976 — to YouTube, in a deal that will bring the film industry’s biggest night to millions more people, translated into 30 different languages, for free.
He told the room: “As we become more global as an organization, the best way for us to reach a global audience of film lovers, film fans, [and] young artists is YouTube. I think the timing this year — Obsession, Backrooms, you and Curry [Barker],” he said, talking to Parsons. “[It’s] moving in the other direction from YouTube to theatrical for us; we’re an organization that celebrates theatrical filmmaking, but at the same time, the Oscars is a television show, and we want to reach a large audience.”
YouTube allows the Academy to directly engage with their audience and film fans in a way that “we just can’t do right now,” continued Kramer. “It gives the Academy more control in engaging with fandom and film lovers and film fans and viewers of the Oscars. Right now more people outside of the U.S. watch the Oscars than in the U.S., and this allows us to capture that audience a lot more,” he said.
When probed by Deadline‘s Andreas Wiseman if he believes the deal to be risky, Kramer said: “Not at all. It almost feels risky to not do it because we’re looking at the future, and the deal starts in [20]29, so that’s our 101st Oscars. And with each month, a larger percentage of the TV-watching audience is on YouTube, and those numbers are increasing. So I don’t think it’s a risk. We have a great partnership with Disney right now. I have to say they’ve been amazing partners and will continue to be for the next two years. But we’re already deep in discussions with [YouTube CEO] Neal Mohan and his team, so I think you’ll see a very different-looking Oscars that allows you to engage with the show in more interactive and deep ways than we can do right now.”
He responded when Wiseman asked if the deal was lucrative: “It was a good deal.”
As part of the deal, YouTube will broadcast not only the Oscars ceremony itself — which generated $150 million in revenue for the Academy from 2024 to 2025, the vast majority via the TV rights deal with Disney — but also a significant amount of related content. Also coming to YouTube: red carpet pre-show and behind-the-scenes in-show content; the Oscar nominations announcement; the Governors Awards, at which the Academy presents honorary Oscars and occasionally the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award; the Oscars Nominees Luncheon; the Student Academy Awards ceremony; the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony; Academy member and filmmaker interviews; film education programs; podcasts and more.
The TV audience for the 2026 Oscars declined, drawing 17.86 million viewers on ABC and Hulu, based on Nielsen’s big data plus panel ratings. That’s down about 9 percent from 2025’s Oscars, which drew 19.69 million viewers for a post-pandemic high, and the smallest audience for the awards since 2022, when 16.68 million people watched.
