Global FAST channel growth hits 2,170 as news and sports surge

The surge in news and sports programming indicates that FAST is successfully moving beyond its reputation as a repository for deep-library reruns. By offering more content produced after 2020 than giants like Amazon Prime Video or HBO Max, FAST platforms are positioning themselves as viable primary viewing destinations rather than secondary options. This shift forces SVOD providers to justify subscription costs against increasingly fresh, free alternatives that are rapidly expanding in international markets like India and the U.K. Watch for whether the 702% growth in Indian-produced FAST content leads to a significant shift in global distribution shares by 2027.

Gracenote has positioned its Data Hub as the industry's primary measurement tool for the free ad-supported streaming television sector. The platform's quarterly reports have become a benchmark for advertisers and content distributors evaluating FAST inventory, and Gracenote's parent company Nielsen integrated the Data Hub into its broader audience measurement suite in early 2025, giving agencies a unified view of FAST and linear TV audiences. That integration matters because it allows media buyers to compare FAST channel reach against traditional broadcast in a single dashboard, accelerating upfront commitments to FAST inventory.

The competitive landscape around FAST channel aggregation is intensifying. Pluto TV surpassed 1,000 live channels in the United States by mid-2025, according to Paramount's quarterly earnings disclosure, while Tubi reported more than 260 million monthly active users globally in the same period. These platform-level expansions feed directly into Gracenote's channel counts, since each new Pluto TV or Tubi original channel increments the global total. Meanwhile, Samsung TV Plus added 120 new channels across Europe and Latin America in the first half of 2025, underscoring that device manufacturers are now among the most aggressive FAST channel creators alongside dedicated platforms.

On the content-freshness front, Gracenote's finding that FAST catalogs contain a higher share of post-2020 titles than major SVOD services aligns with broader shifts in licensing economics. A 2025 analysis by Ampere Research found that FAST platforms acquired 38% more recent-release library titles than SVOD services in the trailing 12 months, driven by studios seeking incremental revenue from content that underperforms on subscription tiers. This dynamic helps explain why news and sports, genres with inherently short shelf lives, are growing fastest within FAST lineups and why Gracenote's data shows those categories leading the 17.5% year-over-year channel expansion.