How Did Hulu Botch the Oscars So Badly?

This year, for the first time, the Oscars were available via streaming in addition to airing live on ABC. Disney, which has owned the network since 1996, naturally opted to keep things in-house and give Hulu the opportunity to be the streaming home for the event. It did not go well.

The problems for Hulu started almost immediately, with more than 34,000 users reporting problems logging in to their accounts to access the stream at the beginning of the show. A whopping 40 minutes later, the streamer posted to the Hulu Support account on X, writing, “Having issues logging in? If so — we’re on it! Our team is actively investigating, and we hope to have things back up and running soon.”

The most glaring issue, however, came towards the end of the evening, when Hulu’s livestream of the event cut off prematurely around 10:40 p.m. EST, causing viewers to miss Best Actress and Best Picture — the two biggest awards of the night — being announced. The show ran long, as the Oscars famously always do, and instead of seeing Mikey Madison accept her award for Anora, Hulu subscribers were met with a message that read “The live event has now ended” and no way to navigate back to the show. The stream was wiped completely from the app’s interface (likely because it was slated to be available on demand the following day), and it never came back up. Instead, movie fans who were watching on Hulu had to find out the night’s biggest winners on social media.

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It all begs the question: how, in the year 2025, does a streaming service mess a live event up this badly? Hulu is hardly the first streamer to experience technical difficulties during a live event. (Remember Netflix’s Love Is Blind reunion fiasco?) In fact, streaming services’ servers not being able to handle a large influx of viewers all tuning in at once is almost par for the course at this point. How is it not something that Hulu prepared for ahead of time? And why would they not assume that the Oscars — an event that always runs long, so much so that the host poking fun at how late the show is has become just as much of an Academy Awards staple as musical numbers parodying each of the year’s Best Picture nominees — would go beyond their allotted time? Isn’t rule number one of airing a live event to be aware of the fact that it likely won’t wrap up at the exact minute it’s supposed to and have a plan in place for when it doesn’t?

Funnily enough, Hulu inadvertently proved Sean Baker right last night. Baker, who took home four awards for Anora, used one of his acceptance speeches to advocate for movie theaters and remind people that the moviegoing experience will never be replaced by streaming services.

“We are all here tonight because we love movies. Where did we fall in love with movies? At the movie theater,” Baker said while accepting the award for Best Director. “In a time in which our world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever: It’s a communal experience you simply don’t get at home.”

“Filmmakers, keep making films for the big screen. I know I will,” he continued. “Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films. Parents, introduce your children to feature films in movie theaters and you will be molding the next generation of movie lovers and filmmakers. And for all of us, when we can, please watch movies in a theater and let’s keep the great tradition of the moviegoing experience alive and well.”

He’s got a point: at least when a theater messes up a screening, you get your money back.