Comcast Earnings Get Boost From Winter Olympics, Super Bowl

Comcast made plenty of additional revenue from its “Legendary February” that included Super Bowl LX and the 2026 Winter Olympics, representing a key bright spot for the NBC Sports parent company. 

Comcast said early Thursday that it generated $2.2 billion in incremental revenue from the two high-profile sports events. The audience for the Winter Olympics from Italy nearly doubled from 2022 and posted a 12-year high, while the Super Bowl won by Seattle averaged 125.6 million viewers—coming close to matching the U.S. television record set last year. 

The additional revenue came almost entirely from domestic advertising, with sales around both big events reaching record or near-record levels, but also included some distribution income.

“We had a real company-wide moment with Legendary February,” Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh said during a call Thursday with analysts. “We outperformed across audience, engagement, and monetization … [It’s] a proof point that when we really lean in, we can move the needle.”

Comcast buttressed both the Super Bowl and Olympics with a series of technological enhancements for its cable subscribers.

The sports-related successes highlighted a somewhat mixed situation elsewhere in Comcast’s first-quarter earnings report. Overall revenue for the period rose 5.3% to $31.46 billion, with the total lift there less than what the two February sports events generated. Net income, meanwhile, plummeted by 35.6% to $2.17 billion as the company grappled with continued declines in its core connectivity and cable businesses.

Both the income and net income measures, however, slightly beat analyst expectations, and Comcast stock rose about 8% in early Thursday trading. 

Peacock Watching

The earnings report also detailed an additional 2 million subscribers to the Peacock streaming from last quarter for a new total of 46 million. 

That increase, however, came at a fairly heavy cost: while Peacock revenue in the quarter soared from $1.2 billion to $2.1 billion, the adjusted loss also grew from $215 million in the comparable period last year to a new figure of $432 million. Comcast attributed the heightened loss to greater programming costs associated with the Olympics and Super Bowl, as well as the fiscal impact of NBC Sports’ new NBA rights deal that began this season.

Still, Cavanagh said Peacock is in line to turn a profit as soon as the current quarter as sports continues to be a core element of the service.

“With straight-line amortization of NBA rights, as we look to the next season lapping itself, the prospect for ongoing and durable profitability for Peacock is what we have our sights on,” he said.