As 2025 draws to a close, the streaming and media landscape has evolved dramatically since the bold forecasts made for 2019. Back then, analysts peered into a future dominated by cord-cutting, streaming wars, and technological shifts. Six years later, with hindsight as our guide, it’s fascinating to revisit those predictions and assess their accuracy. Some nailed the trends with eerie precision, while others veered off course amid unexpected corporate maneuvers, regulatory hurdles, and market surprises. This retrospective examines how those early insights held up, highlighting the hits, misses, and near-misses in an industry that continues to redefine entertainment consumption.
Here are our 2019 predictions, and below you can find how we did:
Realistic Predictions
A Major Live TV Streaming Service Will Shut Down: One forecast anticipated that intense competition would claim a victim among giants like PlayStation Vue, Sling, DIRECTV NOW, FuboTV, or YouTube TV by year’s end. This proved spot-on, as PlayStation Vue revealed its shutdown plans late in 2019, though the service lingered until January 2020 for a smooth wind-down. Meanwhile, DIRECTV NOW underwent a significant overhaul, rebranding to AT&T TV, which altered its operations and pricing structure substantially. These changes underscored the brutal economics of live TV streaming, where subscriber retention and content costs forced consolidations and exits. Looking back, this prediction captured the fragility of the sector, foreshadowing further shakeups like subsequent mergers and pivots in the 2020s.
NFL Sunday Ticket Streaming Version: Observers expected the NFL to signal a shift away from DIRECTV toward a streaming-exclusive Sunday Ticket, potentially announcing the move in 2019 even if the launch came later. The timeline slipped, but the essence materialized when the league inked a deal with YouTube and YouTube TV for…