Fall is not simply a season associated with new television premieres: It also happens to be a lucrative time when network-owned streaming platforms see their largest subscriber acquisitions, according to new research released by Antenna this week.
In a new report called “The New, New Fall Season,” Antenna says September through December has become the most consequential window of the year for streaming services, driven by NFL programming, major series premieres, theatrical movies moving to streaming, service launches and Black Friday promotions.
Around 40 percent of annual gross subscriber additions across streaming now occur during those four months, according to Antenna’s proprietary data, which is based on consumer transactional records like bank and credit card statements along with other opt-in financial metrics.
Last year, seven of eight premium subscription video on-demand (SVOD) services recorded their heaviest acquisition period during the fall, with average daily sign-ups 33 percent higher than the rest of the year.
The pattern is especially clear in premium SVOD: Antenna said all 10 of premium SVOD’s top sign-up days in 2025 occurred between September and December. Specialty SVOD had nine of its top 10 sign-up days during the same period, while sports SVOD had seven.
SVOD services include premium platforms like Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video and Disney Plus along with network-owned services like Comcast’s Peacock, Disney’s Hulu, Paramount Plus and Warner Bros Discovery’s HBO Max.
In their early years, most those premium services offered commercial-free streaming of their content libraries. As time goes on, each company has steadily raised the price of its platform while pushing frugal customers onto lower-cost, ad-inclusive plans that allow them to generate recurring revenue in two ways.
Those ad-supported plans are a larger part of fall subscriber growth. Antenna estimates ad-supported plans accounted for 52 percent of fall gross additions in 2025, up from 43 percent in 2023. Ad-supported gross additions more than doubled to 8.8 million per month over that period, while ad-free additions remained roughly flat.
Promotions, like deals offered during Black Friday, also lift customer acquisition numbers during the last four months of the calendar year. Black Friday week lifted premium SVOD sign-ups 2.8 times above the 2025 daily average. HBO Max saw the largest lift at 5 times its average, followed by Disney Plus at 4 times and Hulu at 3.5 times. Antenna said the lift extended beyond services running promotions, with non-participating services also seeing elevated sign-up activity.
Of course, live sports are also drivers of subscription growth, especially among platforms that offer football, basketball and baseball games. Antenna said 92 percent of net additions for sports-inclusive service over the past three years came within the last four months of any given year. That figure includes streaming cable TV alternatives like YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV and Sling TV.
One popular package remains the NFL Sunday Ticket, which is exclusively sold to sports fans via YouTube and YouTube TV. Together, those Google-owned platforms convinced more than 5 million fans to pay for NFL Sunday Ticket, according to Antenna, despite the fact that the NFL has moved more of its games off Sunday afternoons and onto other, competing streaming platforms.
Premium services that offer regular-season NFL games also see acquisition boosts during the last half of the year: Daily sign-ups to Peacock, Paramount Plus and ESPN Unlimited (formerly ESPN Plus) were 60 percent higher during the NFL season compared to the off-season, Antenna noted.
Fall programming strategies now extend well beyond football. Returning seasons of “Landman,” “Stranger Things,” “The Morning Show,” “Tulsa King” and “Dancing with the Stars” were among the strongest performers with new subscribers in fall 2025.
New series, including “Pluribus,” “The Paper,” “IT: Welcome to Derry” and “The Beast in Me,” also ranked among the top fall titles for new subscribers. Summer theatrical films such as “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” “Superman” and “Weapons” also helped drive fall streaming acquisition after moving to streaming platforms.
