04 Apr YouTube Now Worth as Much as $550 Billion, Analysts Say: ‘New King of All Media’ [Variety]
BY TODD SPANGLER
March 31, 2025 | As YouTube marks its 20th anniversary, the Google-owned video giant is the “new king of all media” — larger and more powerful than any other player in Hollywood — according to an influential Wall Street research firm. What’s more, it’s in a position to gobble up even more screen time and grow bigger.
For the full year 2024, YouTube was already the second-largest media company by revenue at $54.2 billion, trailing only Disney, according to estimates by MoffettNathanson principal analyst Michael Nathanson. But in 2025, YouTube is poised to take the top spot, ahead of Disney (excluding revenue in Disney’s theme parks and product segment) — “making it not only the leader in engagement but revenue as well,” Nathanson wrote.
If YouTube were a standalone business, it would be worth $475 billion to $550 billion, or about 30% of Alphabet’s current valuation, the MoffettNathanson analysts estimated. That’s based on the firm’s analysis of enterprise value as a multiple of revenue in 2024 for Netflix (10.5x revenue), Meta (8.8x), Roku (2.4x), Warner Bros. Discovery (1.4x), Fox (1.3x) and Disney (1.3x). Nathanson also noted that in February 2025, for the second time in the past year, YouTube ranked as the largest aggregate TV content source in the U.S. according to Nielsen (based on viewing time), surpassing traditional TV giants like Disney, Fox Corp., Paramount Global, WBD and NBCUniversal, as well as subscription-streaming leader Netflix.
And YouTube has even more upside ahead if it successfully executes on a strategy to become “the central aggregator for all things professional video,” Nathanson wrote. The MoffettNathanson team’s analysis indicates that YouTube’s engagement on TV remains “significantly under-monetized” relative to its scaled reach and differentiated offering.
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