NBCUniversal mustered up an estimated 2.8 million Peacock subscribers during the first six days of the Paris Summer Olympics, a turnout that fell just shy of the 3 million signups the streaming service notched care of its exclusive coverage of an NFL Wild Card Game in January.
According to the research firm Antenna, Peacock averaged 398,000 new customers per day during the period spanning July 25 to July 31, a week that coincided with the Opening Ceremony and the first five days of Olympics competition. That daily rate marks an increase of more than five-and-a-half-times the levels reached during the previous eight weeks.
The Antenna estimates arrive on the heels of an Olympics that served up 23.5 billion minutes of streams, the vast majority of which were delivered via Peacock. According to NBCU, Paris’ combined streaming figure was up 40% versus the 16.8 billion minutes recorded during all prior Summer and Winter Olympics, combined.
While Antenna’s headcount does not take into consideration the last 11 days of the Olympics, the early assessment (and the robust deliveries) suggests NBCU’s outreach efforts paid off. In the month of July, Peacock captured nearly one-third of all new streaming subscriptions.
Three days before the Games kicked off, Comcast filed a 10-K document with the Securities and Exchange Commission in which it reported a base of 33 million Peacock subs as of June 30. A more complete picture of the streaming service’s Olympics gains will be made available in late October, when the company reports its third quarter earnings.
Streaming subscriptions are far more fluid than traditional pay-TV contracts—for one thing, it’s a hell of a lot easier to walk away from a direct-to-consumer platform than it is to cancel your cable package—and Peacock won’t necessarily retain a majority of those new Paris subs. After the Chiefs dispatched the Dolphins by a 26-7 margin on Jan. 13, many of Peacock’s new customers backed out of their streaming arrangements. Comcast reported a loss of some 500,000 Peacock subs in the second quarter.
NBCU expects the brief layoff between the end of the Olympics and the start of football season should help Peacock retain a greater percentage of its Paris sign-ups. In addition to NBC’s weekly presentation of its primetime NFL flagship, Sunday Night Football, Peacock customers throughout the season will be able to stream a wealth of Big Ten and Notre Dame games.
NBC/Peacock’s college football slate gets underway Aug. 31, with Fresno State-Michigan, while the NFL Kickoff Game (Ravens-Chiefs) is set for Sept. 5. Subscribers who stay put will be rewarded with an early exclusive window on the following night, when Peacock heads down to Brazil to cover a special international showdown between NFC standouts Green Bay and Philadelphia. (The Packers-Eagles game will also air on linear TV in the two home markets.)
The Dolphins-Chiefs playoff was the most-streamed live event in U.S. history, as some 22.9 million viewers took in the action. Of these, 21.5 million fans streamed the game on Peacock while another 1.35 million watched via the NBC affiliates in Miami and Kansas City.
As Peacock continues to lean heavily on sports content, the service is slowly extricating itself from the red. Revenue at Comcast’s streaming segment improved 28% year-over-year to $1 billion in the second quarter, while losses narrowed to $348 million, down from a $651 million hit during the analogous period in 2023.
Peacock has burned through approximately $8.6 billion since it launched in early 2020.
