MTV Video Music Awards 2015 ratings: How many people actually watched?

Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards 2015 dominated social media and took over the headlines, but not as many people actually tuned in as you may think. MTV reports that 9.8 million people watched the show which might sound impressive, but it’s actually down 5 percent from last year and down 23 percent from 2013.

Part of the decline might be due to the fact that an increasing number of people in their 20s and earls 30s, MTV’s target demo, are doing away with cable TV in place of Netflix, Hulu anad other streaming services. In just 2015 alone, the number of people with cable TV is down 12 percent, according to Gigaom. This is supported by the fact that online streaming of the show was up 155 percent from last year, according to Viacom.

While MTV did stream the VMAs online at MTV.com, for some, the streaming kept freezing and had delays. Othes might not have felt the need to watch it live since they knew they could watch it on the site later.

Though not as many people watched the award show as in the past, MTV boasted that it was was the most-tweeted program of 2015, except for the Super Bowl.

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