The red Macy’s star is seen during Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade inflation on November 26, 2025, in New York City.
Getty Images for Macy’s, Inc.
The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade remains one of the last truly monocultural moments in the American media landscape—which is exactly why the parade has also become such an important moment on the calendar for the entertainment industry.
As someone who covers the media business for a living, I’m always reminded how easy it is to watch the parade purely as a holiday ritual and to under-appreciate that it’s also one of the biggest stages the entertainment industry gets all year. For 3.5 hours, NBC and Peacock basically turn the parade into a showcase for many of the characters and franchises that define modern Hollywood.
You could see it all in this year’s lineup, with a streaming player like Netflix appearing alongside legacy giants including Disney, Paramount, DreamWorks, and more.
The Macy’s parade, in the words of executive producer Will Coss, marks “the official kickoff to the holiday season and has been part of the nation’s stories and traditions for generations.” It’s also effectively America’s most-watched entertainment telecast each year, outside of sports; last year’s telecast drew a record 31.3 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, including about 24 million on the live NBC broadcast—meaning a sizable chunk of the audience now comes via streaming.
No wonder Netflix treats the parade like a marquee showcase, this year rolling out its “Upside Down Invasion: Stranger Things” float along with a “Derpy Tiger” balloon and a Sussie “balloonicle” (an inflatable that’s driven during the parade) from the animated film KPop Demon Hunters—along with a live performance by Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami, the voices behind the film’s girl group HUNTR/X.
Disney, meanwhile, made sure to spotlight characters from its many evergreen hits like Buzz Lightyear and Spider-Man, Paramount leaned on kids’ titles like SpongeBob, Dora, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Universal’s DreamWorks brought its own staples, including Shrek. Also scheduled to appear this year, on the video game front, were Mario, Pikachu, and Pac-Man.
When you think about it, the parade has quietly become its own kind of new media upfront, in a way—a chance for studios to put their biggest franchises in front of millions of consumers heading into the end of the year. That makes the parade prime TV real estate for brands.
“This iconic event has not only become a beloved American pastime but also a pivotal platform for brands to connect with audiences in meaningful ways,” reads a study about the parade from media intelligence firm Guideline. NBC generated an estimated $53 million in ad revenue from the parade in 2023 and $55 million in 2024, the Guideline study adds.
The takeaway: The Macy’s parade clearly remains one of the last true powerhouse broadcast drivers. It’s also a spectacle-filled snapshot of who’s winning the media industry’s never-ending fight for attention. If you want to get a clear, larger-than-life sense of who’s winning that fight, this is the one day of the year when all you have to do is look up.