Just how huge is YouTube, anyway?

YouTube is an entertainment behemoth. This much we know and had done for a while, even before it routinely started cropping up as the biggest thing on TVs, emerged as the leading platform in the ever-expanding podosphere, and steadily built an ad business that has (by itself) become almost Netflix-sized.

Now, according to new research from industry analysts at MoffettNathanson, the Alphabet-owned property has grown to become the biggest media company in the world, per fresh revenue estimates for the latest fiscal year.

Walt who?

MoffettNathanson estimates that YouTube brought in some $62.3 billion in revenue across 2025 — a sensible estimate, given that Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that YouTube sales “surpassed $60 billion across ads and subscriptions” in prepared remarks from the company’s Q4 earnings call just last month.

What it would also mean, however, is that YouTube notched higher revenues last year than Disney did across its media properties (what’s left of the business after its gargantuan Experiences segment is stripped out), perhaps making it “the world’s largest media company.”

For its last fiscal year, Disney’s Entertainment and Sports categories — which cover everything from the $6.58 billion its movies took at the global box office in 2025, to the Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN subscription fees that users pay each month — brought in $60.2 billion between them. While that puts Disney’s media haul way ahead of the money that Netflix and other competitors brought in, it also places the company about $2 billion short of YouTube.

Of course, a lot of that YouTube money doesn’t necessarily end up in GOOG’s pocket, as the company splits as much as 55% of its advertising revenue with creators. Indeed, Alphabet said it paid YouTubers a staggering $100 billion in just four years through September 2025, owing to its various revenue splits with the users that fill the site with content. No wonder MrBeast is always smiling like that in his thumbnails.