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The Tokyo Games are delayed by a year, the recent rise in coronavirus cases and exit of marquee athletes, but the flurry of events and the increase in medal numbers for the United States has helped Peacock, Comcast’s fledgling streaming service.
The company said on Thursday that as of this week, the service has 54 million accounts and nearly 20 million active users. this is an increase from the end of March, when the company said it has 42 million registrations and 14 million active accounts. Comcast also said it will offer Peacock for free to its 20 million customers on Sky, the company’s satellite TV service in the UK and Europe.
Comcast, which owns the rights to the Olympics through its media unit NBCUniversal, Peacock departing coincided with the event last year. With the event delayed for a year, the cable giant relied on a number of original programs and old shows from the NBC library to attract customers.
It got off to a weak start and saw slow growth in subscriber numbers in its first year. Service in the second quarter of 2021, page from other streaming platforms and “Boss Baby 2,” one of Universal Pictures’ big films, was released in theaters on the same day as Peacock.
NBCUniversal plans to show 7,000 hours of Olympic coverage across all its broadcast and cable networks and Peacock, which offers a free tier, making it an outlet for cord cutters.
In a conference call Thursday following Comcast’s second-quarter financial report, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said Peacock has changed the way the Olympics are viewed and will be a key part of the company in future games, including Winter. The Olympics are next year in Beijing.
“We will take what we will learn at these Olympics to Beijing,” he said.
The company expects Tokyo Games to be profitable, partly due to the increase in viewership on the streaming platform.
Comcast, the largest cable provider in the US, now considers itself an internet business as pay television continues to erode. Peacock is an extension of that plan, but it’s also a way to recapture advertising revenue lost due to the decline in traditional viewers on NBC and cable networks. Unlike Netflix, Peacock relies on a combination of subscription revenue and advertising. It also sells a higher cost tier with no ads.
For the second quarter, Comcast lost 364,000 cable TV customers, bringing its total to 18 million and gaining 334,000 internet subscribers, for a total of 29 million. The internet business is currently the largest, with revenue growing 14.3 percent to $5.7 billion.
The peacock, on the other hand, is the fastest growing unit, but loses the most money. For the three months ended June, Peacock recorded a pretax loss of $363 million on revenue of $122 million, compared to a pre-tax loss of $117 million on revenue of $6 million for the same period last year.
For 2021, Comcast expects Peacock to lose $1.3 billion as it spends big on original shows and sports programming.
Given the poor ratings of the opening ceremony, there was concern that the Olympics could also be a money loser. About 17 million people watched this broadcast, a drop of about 36 percent from the Rio Games. NBCUniversal paid nearly $12 billion for the rights to televise the 10 Olympic Games by 2032.
“We were a little unlucky – there was a drum of negativity,” Mr Shell said on the earnings call. “But on the other hand, digital trends kind of make up for it.”
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