We criticize them but we watch them: the audience for awards galas is on the rise
Broadcasts of ceremonies such as Gaudí, Goya or Oscar are regaining viewers
BarcelonaIt is a television tradition that many viewers follow, basically, to criticize. Until recently it seemed that the awards galas, whether Oscar, Goya or Gaudí, did not provide television profits and were in decline, but in recent years the audience data indicate the opposite: the loss of viewers has stopped and, in some cases, an increase has even been detected. The clearest and closest example is the Gaudí and Goya ceremonies this year, since both have improved their audience share.
The night when The 47 It became the big winner of Catalan cinema and was watched by 263,000 viewers and obtained a share of 18.4%, the best of the last nine years. These are also higher figures than those of the 2024 edition, when the gala, which is broadcast on TV3, was watched by 210,000 people and the share was 14.8%. Although it does not reach the maximum obtained in the tenth edition of the Gaudí –the year of Carla Simón's triumph with Summer 1993, The gala had 377,000 spectators and one share
The case of the Goya Awards, which are broadcast on La 1, is even more evident. After the minimum they registered in 2021, when they remained at a sad 15.6% of the screen share, the audiences experienced a clear and progressive rise. The ceremony presented by Leonor Watling and Maribel Verdú registered a share of 24.4%, the best of the last five years, although it is far from the maximum obtained in 2019, which was 26.2%.
An international trend as well
The increase in audiences detected in Spain also has an international reflection. The last Oscar gala, which was broadcast on television through the ABC channel and for the first time also streaming through the Hulu platform, has experienced an upturn that adds to the progressive growth of the last four years. According to the consulting firm Nielsen, the total audience for the ceremony adding the different windows was 19.69 million viewers, 200,000 more viewers than in 2024, when 19.49 million viewers followed the awards ceremony. It should be noted that this year's figures are the best of the last five years: in 2020, the last gala before the pandemic, 23.64 million viewers watched the historic victory of the South Korean film Parasites. Viewership dropped dramatically with the pandemic: in 2021, the year of the first ceremony since the start of Covid, it reached its lowest point in history with 10.4 million viewers. Once this bad moment has been overcome, the audiences have been gradually recovering.
The celebration of the Emmys, which each year award the most outstanding series, has also seen an improvement. In the last edition, which took place in September 2024, 7 million viewers watched how Shogun won the award for best drama series. This figure represents an increase of 55% compared to the previous year, when the awards experienced the biggest drop in their history and were left with 4.46 million viewers. Another gala that can boast a good recovery is the Golden Globes, which in 2025 has had an audience of 10.1 million viewers, 7% more than the previous edition, which registered 9.4 million followers. In the case of the Golden Globes, the increase in audience is not only important from a television point of view but also indicates a small recovery of prestige after of the scandals involving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which was in charge of organizing the awards until then.
Although the viewing figures for the galas are improving, it is increasingly common for some of these ceremonies, usually the least popular, to be offered through streaming platforms. One of the recent cases is the celebration of the Screen Actors Guild Awards, which this year could be seen exclusively through Netflix with Kristen Bell as the master of ceremonies. In recent weeks, the American media have pointed to the possibility that this same platform will broadcast the Oscar gala after the economic disagreement between the United States Film Academy and Disney, the group that owns ABC, which has offered the awards gala since the 1970s. The current agreement between the Academy and the group0. Disney is not willing to pay more for the ceremony, while Hollywood seeks to increase its income. With 300 million subscriptions worldwide, Netflix seems to be the only platform capable of responding to the economic demands of the Oscars.
