TV Ratings: 2025 AMAs Down 20 Percent

The 2025 American Music Awards, hosted by Jennifer Lopez, saw a 20% drop in viewership compared to the 2024 50th anniversary special, drawing 4.73 million viewers during its live broadcast on CBS and Paramount+ on May 26, 2025, per Nielsen live-plus-same-day data. Despite a 34% increase from the last live show on November 20, 2022 (3.53 million viewers), the 2025 AMAs fell 19.66% short of the 5.85 million viewers for the 2024 special, which benefited from an NFL doubleheader lead-in and aired as a two-hour pre-recorded event on October 6, 2024.

The 2025 ceremony, the first live AMAs since 2022 after CBS acquired the rights from ABC, outperformed the 2022 broadcast with an 84% surge among adults 18-34, 19% among adults 18-49, and 13% among adults 25-54. It also outdrew recent primetime specials, with a 36% larger audience than NBC’s SNL 50 Years of Music (3.49 million viewers in January 2025) and 48% more than ABC’s CMA Fest (3.19 million viewers in June 2024).

Social media buzz was significant, driven by Lopez’s kiss-filled performance, generating 9.2 billion potential impressions and 816,600 mentions. The AMAs’ social media accounts amassed over 100 million video views within 24 hours across Instagram, TikTok, X, and Facebook, according to Listenfirst.