Losses lessen at Peacock as subscriber count reaches 28 million

Peacock’s move to make customers sign up and pay up is working.

NBCUniversal’s flagship streaming service added 4 million customers in its most recent quarter, parent company Comcast disclosed, bringing the service’s total subscriber base to 28 million, a nearly 80% YoY increase. Overall, Peacock revenue in the quarter was up 64% in the quarter, to $830 million.

More importantly, the streaming service lost $565 million in the quarter, down 8% compared to a year ago. Comcast—which is preparing for the sale of its stake in Disney-operated streamer Hulu—anticipated that losses for Peacock, which it previously forecast to hit a peak of $3 billion this year, will be slightly less, at $2.8 billion.

“We continue to be pleased with our progress in the few short years since we’ve pivoted our streaming strategy as a result of the ownership changes at Hulu,” Comcast Corp. president Mike Cavanagh told investors Thursday morning.

Changing course: The subscriber growth, along with the shrinking losses for the streamer, come after the company scrapped its free ad-supported tier earlier this year, started charging Comcast Xfinity customers for Peacock in 2022, and hiked prices for ad-supported and ad-free viewers this summer.

Peacock has boosted its programming options, including next-day airings of certain NBC shows, which began to appear on the platform last year, and live sports, which Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts described as “at the heart and soul of a lot of what we do,” since it can benefit both streaming and Comcast’s connectivity business.

“We see all sports finding a way over the next [few] years to be more and more streamed,” Roberts said. “And that’s going to require more bandwidth, and that’s going to require and create an opportunity for us to have the superior product in the market.”

Yes, but: Amid a still-soft ad market, US revenue fell 8.4% YoY to $1.9 billion, which Cavanagh attributed to economic uncertainty that is largely affecting the company’s linear ads business.

Nuclear power: The success of hit biopic Oppenheimer was another bright spot for Comcast despite a still-challenging year for theatrical revenue. The film earned more than $900 million at the box office, “becoming the highest-grossing biopic of all time,” the company reported. With that said, though, NBCUniversal’s overall theatrical revenue was still down 25% year over year.