Super Bowl, Olympics Power Comcast Through Q1

Comcast got a needed boost from two of the world’s largest sporting events as it fought through challenges in other sectors of its business.

The NBCUniversal owner brought in $31 billion in the first quarter, up 14% year-over-year.

The company generated $1.5 billion from the Beijing Winter Olympics and Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles, which collectively accounted for 21.6% of NBCUniversal’s media revenue in the quarter.

• Advertising revenue leapt 59.2% year-over-year, due largely to the two major sports events.
• The Olympics, which took place over 16 days beginning Feb. 4, brought in $963 million in revenue, while the Super Bowl scored $519 million on Feb. 13.
• Over 200 million people watched at least one of the events, factoring in the network’s streaming service Peacock. While the Super Bowl had a robust 112 million viewers, the Olympics sagged to its lowest ratings in NBCUniversal’s history broadcasting the Games.

Feather in Their Cap

The two sporting events helped raise Peacock’s subscriber count by around 4 million, boosting its totals to 13 million paying users and 28 million monthly active accounts. The service still lost money in the quarter, however.

The news comes as investors are growing wary of streaming services following Netflix’s first subscriber loss in a decade. Netflix’s stumble not only knocked its own stock price down, but also triggered 4-6% declines in Disney, Roku, Discovery, and Paramount.

Comcast’s stock slid around 6% on Thursday, in part due to slowing growth in its broadband segment.