Cultural trends, streaming, the quality of last year’s cinematic creations – a lot of things influence how many people tune in for award shows. The viewership numbers are in for the 2024 Oscars and it is perhaps the most unique year we’ve seen in a while with numbers reaching both highs and lows and an event generating unprecedented anticipation and overhype fatigue.
The 96th Academy Awards were held on Sunday, March 10, and broke with tradition by starting an hour early, at 7 p.m. The years leading up to 2020 saw a jagged downward trend in viewership numbers before the year after lockdown severely kneecapped ratings, with 2021 drawing in less than half of 2020’s ceremony. The 2024 Oscars has shown a major deviation in this downward spiral – but it’s still just not what it used to be.
The viewership numbers for the 2024 Oscars show both growth and reduction at the same time
The 2024 Oscars had last year’s cultural phenomenon of Barbenheimer, the unexpected partnership of Barbie and Oppenheimer, generating loyal viewership among those wanting to see the skirmish through to the very end. To an extent, it certainly helped. Sunday’s ceremony drew in 19.5 million viewers, which was an increase from last year’s 18.8 million, according to Nielsen.
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This also means the 2024 Oscars had the highest viewership since 2020; that year had 23.6 million fans tuning in, but it had only gone downhill from there. In 2021 only 10.4 million people tuned in to watch the Academy Awards, and in 2022 that number was 16.62 million.
However, if you go even further back from 2020, the numbers were over twice as high.
The greater context of Academy Award history, by the numbers
The history of the Academy Awards has definitely grown exponentially over the years, from its very start in May 1929 as a private dinner function at The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel which had an audience of just 270 people, to today, where the Dolby Theatre accommodates 3,400 attendees. Statistica has the viewership numbers from 2000 to 2024, and that tells quite the story by itself.
From 2000 to about 2014, the Oscars had enjoyed relatively consistent popularity – relatively, because there were definitely some dips here and there, but they were more of an exception than a norm. But while 2014 had 43.7 million people tuning in, 2015 dropped down to 36.6 million, and it’s only decreased from there before the big plummet in 2021.
So, 2024’s audience definitely stands at a high point in the last four years since post-pandemic life threw everything off its axis, but it is still vastly eclipsed by 2000’s ratings. 2024 was helped along by Barbenheimer, especially because, according to CBS, viewership really rocketed in the last half hour when Ryan Gosling, joined by Slash and Wolfgang Van Hale, performed “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie, and Cillian Murphy won Best Actor for Oppenheimer. But what will 2025 look like without this pink and gray meme to draw people in: a continued upward climb back to 40 million, or continual straggling?
