Oscars 2025 marked the 97th iteration of the Academy Awards. The evening saw the sweeping victory of Anora across multiple award categories, including the Best Director award for Sean Baker. Even though Oscars 2025 was the most anticipated and important event of the year, it didn't come to pass without a few technical glitches of its own.
In a rare case of misfortune, Hulu's live-stream of the 97th Academy Awards was plagued by technical glitches, sign-in trouble and even an abrupt early close to the event's streamer broadcast.
Owned by Disney+, Hulu, over the past years, has established itself as a leading streaming platform. The Academy Awards Ceremony has hitherto been regularly broadcasted by television networks such as ABC.
It was indeed a prestigious moment for Hulu when the streaming platform was entrusted with the responsibility of live-streaming the entire Oscars 2025 event. Nevertheless, as glitches and hiccups almost ruined the watching experience for countless users, many were frustrated enough to express themselves on Hulu's support page on X.
The latest Academy Awards ceremony was hosted by Conan O'Brian and Hulu users ended up missing his praiseworthy opening monologue, along with the majority of the night's first half. Here's everything we know about the mishap that took place.
Hulu's disappointing Oscars 2025 live-stream
Oscars 2025 was supposed to be the first time that the coveted award ceremony would be live-streamed on Hulu. The mishap and glitches that followed were doubly pronounced owing to this very fact, as Hulu users were expecting a hassle-free experience. It hasn't been ascertained whether the streaming platform lacked the bandwidth to live-stream such a popular award ceremony, or whether the streamer's technical acumen wasn't up to the mark.
Hulu users began experiencing glitches as soon as the Oscars 2025 ceremony kicked off. Many of them had trouble signing in to their Hulu account while others were faced with a complete blackout on the streamer that lasted well into the second half of the event. Disney+ and Hulu technicians were eventually able to bring the live-stream back on, only for it to once again abruptly end right before the awardees for Best Actress and Best Picture were announced.
The Oscars 2025 ceremony took a commercial break after revealing that Sean Baker had been awarded as the Best Director. Coming back from the break, the live-stream cut to black right after Baker was done with his acceptance speech. While the final moments of the award ceremony were broadcasted on ABC, Hulu's user interface indicated that the ceremony and the live-stream had ended with the message:
"Thank you for watching! This live event has now ended. You may exit playback and select something else to watch."
According to Deadline, Disney gave the following statement in this regard:
"This evening, we experienced technical and live stream issues on Hulu which impacted some Oscars viewers. We apologize for the experience and will make a full replay of the event available as soon as possible.”
Although Hulu's technical support team was quick to take account of the live-stream glitch and stated early on in the evening:
"Thanks so much for hanging in there! Our team took the necessary steps to resolve this, so you should be all set after rebooting your device. We appreciate your patience!"
They eventually noted that the cause of the glitch had finally been identified:
"Our team has identified the issue and users affected should be able to log back in again soon. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Will the fate of big event live-streams improve in the future?
The failure of Oscars 2025 livestream on Hulu isn't just an isolated one-off event as the streaming platform giant Netflix too had received much flak after its live-stream debacle during the November, 2024 Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson prize fight contest. With numerous frozen screen moments and buffering that didn't seem to end, Netflix's live-stream fiasco wasn't any lesser than Hulu's when it comes to ruining the watching experience.
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Although some may believe that live-streaming may be the future of entertainment, it surely has a long way to go before it is considered as a serious alternative to cable television broadcast.
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