Peacock is working. We expressed skepticism when Comcast announced their streaming service which is built around it’s owned assets such as films from Universal, TV shows from NBC and now news from its news and cable news division. In Wednesday’s earnings report Comcast announced that Peacock had 4 million new subscribers in the first quarter of this year. While the company does not expect to see that number continue the ballooning next quarter it does expect that the end of 2022 will see another subscriber boom as it becomes the exclusive home of NBC shows for next day streaming. Reporting earlier in the year showed that for instance the most popular show on Peacock was Saturday night live.
We have reported also that the deal between Peacock and the WWE is paying dividends as WWE is subscribers hopped in with Peacock helped build an audience for a very closely watched Wrestlemania this month.
Sports could be keeper going forward. Besides the previously announced Sunday morning baseball, Peacock is also home to Notre Dame football on Saturdays, NFL Sunday night football, and it’s still the home of future Olympic games. Depending on how well the USFL does as a league and future prospects, the streamer has a chance to become an actual sports destination for both cord cutters and the millions of subscribers who get the service via their Comcast subscriptions and upcoming 16 million new subscribers from Charter.
Comcast announced yesterday that the company has come into a partnership with charter which is the number 2 cable provider in the country will allow its subscribers to receive the service for free, which was one of Peacocks oiginal goals in the first place. Yes the streamer has a subscription model but counted on cable TV providers to partner with the service and offer it to their customers. With Charter joining the fray, one could logically expect smaller cable providers to do the same giving Comcast lots of new ad revenue if nothing else. Considering that universal films will start exclusively streaming on Peacock before this is all over it is hard not to acknowledge it as a compelling service going forward.
