AMAs Attract Largest Audience Since 2019—Thanks to CBS Feature

The American Music Awards (AMAs) drew the largest audience since 2019—thanks to the move to CBS.

The 2025 AMAs were hosted by Jennifer Lopez, with the two-hour prime-time event attracting 4.86 million viewers. That’s a 38% increase over its last live broadcast in 2022, which aired on ABC. This year’s awards show reclaimed the top spot as the #1 broadcast of the night—demonstrating the growing impact of multi-platform distribution. These ratings include both traditional live viewership and live streaming figures from Paramount+, reflecting the change streaming video is having on live event viewership.

The 2022 AMAs, which aired on November 20 on ABC had significantly lower viewership. The resurgence in audience numbers signals renewed interest in live music award shows—perhaps with a boost from Swifties. Taylor Swift fans speculated that the singer may use the AMAs to announce her next Taylor’s Version album—but that didn’t happen. Instead, Taylor Swift announced last week that she had re-acquired the rights to her original masters from Shamrock Capital.

This year’s American Music Awards outpaced several recent prime-time specials, too. They were 26% higher than ABC’s CMA Country Christmas on December 3, which achieved 3.87 million viewers. It was also 39% higher than NBC’s SNL 50 Years of Music broadcast on January 27, which achieved 3.49 million viewers. Perhaps most impressive, the AMAs outpaced ABC’s CMA Fest by 52%, which aired on June 25, 2024 with 3.19 million viewers.

CBS also estimates that the AMAs drove 9.2 billion potential impressions and 816.6K mentions on social media as the world discussed the broadcast. It boasted growth across all key demos versus the 2022 broadcast as well. This year was up 91% among the 18-34 age cohort, 23% among the 18-49 cohort, and 16% among the 25-54 cohort.

Highlighting the importance of social media, CBS reveals that the 2025 AMAs social accounts garnered over 100 million video views within the first 24 hours of airing across Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, and Facebook. Meanwhile, the AMAs Twitch live broadcast peaked at 205.5K during the appearance of YouTube star Kai Cenat’s appearance.