The Top 19 Entertainment & Media Trends of 2025

Cloud gaming accelerates as global population becomes more connected

While the global population is becoming increasingly internet connected – there are 5.56 billion internet users as of 2025 – many are still accessing the internet though with just a phone, no desktop, and certainly no gaming console.

With rising internet speeds, wider mobile adoption, and better cloud computing technology, cloud gaming is benefiting from bigger changes happening in the technology sector.

Gaming companies are particularly keen on this as the lower barrier to entry means a larger gaming market.

Musicians add unique visuals to concerts, creating share-worthy moments to boost their brand

Orchestras have long recognized the appeal of playing music from famous movies and Disney films to attract a broader and younger audience, boosting their revenue.

Nowadays, many musicians are taking a similar approach but with a twist; they're adding unique visual elements to their concerts to make their events stand out. This not only differentiates their performances but also encourages audience members to take photos and share them on social media, helping to promote the concerts virally.

Young adults are increasingly gaming as a way to make friends

Gaming has become a top social activity for Gen Z and Gen Y, with nearly half of young adults reporting they made long-term friends while gaming. And 40% of Gen Z and Millennials reported socializing more in video games than in person. The rise of online multiplayer games and social platforms like Discord has taken things even further, making gaming an even more interactive and communal experience.

Growth of indie book publishing and self-publishing

Romance novels are a surprisingly big business. Not only does the category generate $1.5B in sales each year, but it also accounts for nearly half of all mass-market paperback sales.

In 2007, when Amazon launched the Kindle, they also rolled out Kindle Direct Publishing, a way for authors to freely distribute their books. This was the first time the bar for publishing a book was simply having an email address and it led to many authors suddenly being able to generate income.

Romance readers also, on average, read far more romance books each year than readers of other genres. This benefits self-published writers who can move more quickly and publish more books per year.

Fifty Shades of Grey, the most popular romance novel today, was self-published and sold 4x the number of Kindle ebooks than print editions.

Esports growth - expansion of esports in mainstream sports and media

Esports has exploded into mainstream culture, with global audiences surpassing 300 million. This surge is driven by increased online streaming, greater access to gaming technology, and a significant rise in competitive gaming tournaments with substantial prize pools. Major media networks and sports brands are now investing in esports, recognizing its potential to capture and engage younger demographics who prefer interactive and on-demand entertainment.

Publishing books is increasingly used as a status symbol, in a world where the bar to stand out keeps getting higher

Reedsy—a marketplace that lets self-publishing authors hire editors and book designers, and even ghostwriters—caters, in part, to a unique sort of author: the kind who wants to publish a book to signal credibility, not necessarily to make a living. In careers like marketing and finance, it's common for entrepreneurs to use a book as evidence that they're an expert, but the book itself doesn't need to be especially good.

What they're paying for isn't the service of publishing a book: it's the way to use a picture of their book in their social media header photos, so hiring a good cover designer is a must. It's also being able to add ""author"" to their LinkedIn title. In this sense, it's a downmarket version of O'Reilly Publishing's model: O'Reilly produces reams of technical books. Authors get paid for this, but the real money they make is from the jobs they get from having written a book.

Reedsy's growth also comes from a change in the dynamics of the publishing industry. The traditional book publishing business was built around distribution to bookstores and other large sellers. Today, Amazon and Gumroad have infinite shelf space, which means the problem is not getting a book distributed—it's getting the book noticed.

Rise of competitive gaming creates an ecosystem of gameplay training software

The rise of competitive gaming is part of a larger wave in sports trends, creating two types of gaming culture. Some players just want to relax and have a good time, while others want to excel competitively. As games get more challenging, and players refine their techniques, it gets harder and harder to leave the first group and join the second.

Even for casual players, the required skill level is rising. Gen Y treats video games the way an older generation treated golf: as a way to socialize while also competing. This has led to a profusion of companies that offer training and analytics to help players build up their skills.

Refrag is popular in this space, focusing on improving players' skills in a specific version of Counterstrike. Counterstrike is one game of many, and far less popular than games like Fortnite, indicating that this is a large market with room for more participants.

Gamers increasingly investing larger sums into home gaming setups and on products that make the experience more comfortable

As gaming increasingly competes for time with other activities like television, social drinking, and even sex (according to the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Data), gaming products have all seen rising sales, from gaming chairs, to high-refresh-rate monitors, gaming mice, LED keyboards, and more.

Gamers have also started buying comfort-focused items like gaming pillows, reflecting larger shifts in furniture design.

Horse racing games on the rise

Horse racing, once a massive business, was the only legal form of gambling in the US outside of Las Vegas until 1978.

But the sport shrunk over time. Other forms of gambling later became legal and grew in popularity and the proliferation of cable TV plus the remote control meant horse racing’s slow pace cast it out of favor. As well, the lifespan of star racehorses compared to their human counterparts in other sports led to lower momentum around particular horses, and general concerns for animal cruelty made viewers less interested.

One of the first companies to bring it back, but in digital form, was Zed Run. Rather than focusing on gambling, Zed Run lets users breed digital racing horses. The horses had traits that affect their odds of winning races, and they could be bred to create new horses which inherited some of these traits in a partially randomized way, similar to real-life racehorse breeding. Zed Run charged a percentage of the "stud fee" for breeding, a mechanism that allowed them to monetize a part of the game that both involves wagering on randomized outcomes and doesn't look like gambling.

The game hosted continuous races, where players paid to enter their digital horses and then collected prize money if the horses won.

Now, similar games focused on horse-racing are on the rise, like Star Equestrian.