Oscar audience drops to lowest level since 2021

Academy Awards viewership falls by nine per cent, its first decline since post-pandemic period

LOS ANGELES:

The number of people in the United States tuning in live to watch the Oscars dropped by nine percent from last year, viewing figures released Tuesday showed.

Around 17.9 million people saw political thriller "One Battle After Another," starring Leonardo DiCaprio, take home the top prize at Hollywood's premier awards gala on Sunday.

That included people watching on the ABC broadcast network and streamer Hulu, both of which are owned by Disney.

The 98th Academy Awards was hosted by comedian Conan O'Brien, and featured musical segments that paid tribute to the Netflix phenomenon "K-Pop Demon Hunters" and box-office hit "Sinners," Ryan Coogler's vampire meditation on race relations in America.

Michael B. Jordan, who played twin brothers Smoke and Stack in "Sinners," took home the best actor Oscar, after a tight race in which Timothee Chalamet had been expected to triumph for his unlikeable ping pong player in "Marty Supreme."

The show also included a lengthy "In Memoriam" segment, paying tribute to actor Robert Redford, which included a rare stage performance from Barbra Streisand.

The Academy Awards broadcast, which once routinely drew audiences of 40 million, saw its viewership plummet to 10.4 million in the pandemic strangled year of 2021.

Since then, it had been gradually recovering viewership, until this year.

In 2025, when Sean Baker's "Anora" was named Best Picture, the broadcast reached a wider audience thanks to streaming services, which brought the event to mobile phones and computers.

This year's decline aligns with trends seen in other awards season events, such as the Golden Globes and the Grammys, both of which experienced similar drops in viewership.

Sunday's telecast also faced competition from sports with the World Baseball Classic semi-finals, in which the United States defeated the Dominican Republic.

The Oscars, which close out Hollywood's awards season, will be broadcast exclusively on YouTube starting in 2029.

The 98th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, United States. During the gala, the AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as the Oscars) in 24 categories, honoring films released in 2025. The ceremony was televised in the United States by ABC and streamed on Hulu. Comedian Conan O'Brien returned to host the show for the second consecutive time, after receiving acclaim for hosting the previous year, with Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan returning as executive producers for the third consecutive year, and Hamish Hamilton returning as director.

One Battle After Another won a leading six awards, including Best Picture and Best Casting, becoming the inaugural recipient for the latter category. Other winners included Sinners with four awards; Frankenstein with three; KPop Demon Hunters with two; and All the Empty Rooms, Avatar: Fire and Ash, F1, The Girl Who Cried Pearls, Hamnet, Mr Nobody Against Putin, Sentimental Value, The Singers, Two People Exchanging Saliva, and Weapons with one each. The telecast drew 17.86 million viewers in the United States.

The sixteen nominations received by Sinners are the most in Oscar history. It also broke the record for most Black individuals nominated for a single film at ten. Numerous film critics and journalists praised the breakthrough of nominations, applauding the Academy for embracing Black cinema and the horror genre.