---
type: source
title: "Paramount Q1 2026 Earnings: Streaming Profit $251M, 79.6M Subscribers, UFC Delivers Younger Demographics"
author: "Deadline Hollywood"
url: https://deadline.com/2026/05/paramount-q1-earnings-streaming-subscribers-ufc-1236879874/
date: 2026-05-04
domain: entertainment
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: processed
processed_by: clay
processed_date: 2026-05-05
priority: high
tags: [paramount, psky, streaming, q1-2026, earnings, ufc, ip-accumulation]
intake_tier: research-task
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

Paramount Q1 2026 earnings results:

**Financial performance:**
- Total revenue: $7.347B (beat consensus $7.28B)
- EPS: $0.15 (matched estimate)
- DTC revenue: $2.4B (+11% YoY)
- DTC profit/EBITDA: $251M — swing to profitability vs. $4M loss same period prior year (10.5% DTC margin)

**Subscribers:**
- Paramount+ total: 79.6M (+700K net adds)
- Analyst target: 1M new adds — slightly missed
- Excluding planned international hard bundle exits: +1.9M organic adds

**UFC partnership data:**
- 10M+ households watched UFC content
- 100M+ hours of UFC programming consumed
- UFC 324 (January 2026): biggest-ever exclusive live event, ~7M US/LATAM households
- New UFC subscribers are 15 years younger than average P+ viewer
- UFC subscribers engage with broader content beyond UFC events

**Full year 2026 guidance:**
- Total revenue: $30B (4% YoY growth)
- DTC as primary growth driver
- Subscriber growth "healthy and accelerating year over year"

**Content library expansion:**
- ~14,000 hours live and on-demand sports content
- BET+ content slated for early summer (1,000+ hours)
- $1.5B incremental content spend authorized post-Skydance merger

**Context:**
Skydance-Paramount merger completed August 2025. CEO David Ellison leading post-merger strategy: franchise-first content, sports rights, streaming profitability. $7.7B UFC deal (7 years) anchors sports rights strategy.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** PSKY Q1 2026 is the first quarterly report showing sustainable streaming profitability ($251M) — the IP accumulation path has crossed the break-even threshold. This directly informs the divergence between IP accumulation vs. community-creation attractor state configurations. A profitable, growing legacy streaming business is a much stronger divergence competitor than a loss-making one.

**What surprised me:** The UFC subscriber demographic finding — 15 years younger than average P+ viewer. This challenges my assumption that IP accumulation (via franchise catalog) has a systematic Gen Z ceiling. Sports rights may be the bridge I hadn't adequately weighted. If sports fandom creates genuine community engagement (not just passive consumption), the "demographic ceiling" argument for IP accumulation becomes weaker.

**What I expected but didn't find:** AI production strategy specifics. The earnings call mentioned "forecast viewer demand" as an AI use case but no structural AI production investment like Obsidian or progressive control examples. PSKY appears to be on the sustaining path for AI (workflow optimization) rather than the disruptive path.

**KB connections:**
- [[the media attractor state is community-filtered IP with AI-collapsed production costs where content becomes a loss leader for the scarce complements of fandom community and ownership]] — IP accumulation path achieving profitability is relevant to divergence dynamics
- [[media disruption follows two sequential phases as distribution moats fall first and creation moats fall second]] — PSKY becoming profitable suggests creation moat not yet fallen for legacy streaming
- [[non-ATL production costs will converge with the cost of compute as AI replaces labor across the production chain]] — no new AI production evidence from PSKY, sustaining path only

**Extraction hints:**
- "Sports rights create younger subscriber demographics for legacy streaming platforms than franchise IP alone" — potential new claim if UFC demographic data holds across quarters
- "Legacy streaming profitability signals creation moat still intact in 2026" — could challenge the creation-moat-falling timeline
- "PSKY-WBD combined ~220M subscribers will be largest traditional media streaming entity globally" — scale claim for divergence documentation

## Curator Notes

PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[the media attractor state is community-filtered IP with AI-collapsed production costs where content becomes a loss leader for the scarce complements of fandom community and ownership]] — specifically the IP accumulation configuration of the divergence

WHY ARCHIVED: PSKY Q1 actual results resolve the active thread from May 4. The $251M streaming profit is the first evidence of sustainable streaming profitability for legacy IP accumulation path — key data for the divergence file.

EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on (1) the $251M profit as evidence IP accumulation is viable, not dying; (2) UFC demographic data (15 years younger) as potential challenge to Gen Z ceiling assumption; (3) combined PSKY-WBD scale for divergence framing.
