NBC Chairman: Peacock ‘Added a Lot of Subs’ From Paris Olympics

NBC’s Peacock app was the streaming star of the Paris Olympics, posting near-record viewership (second only to two NFL games Peacock had streamed before the Olympics) and earning plaudits for the breadth and variety of its programming.

Heading into the Olympics, NBC disclosed in July that Peacock had 33 million subscribers, a drop of one million from Q1. But major tentpole events have been a boon to Peacock subs in the past: In the days leading up to Peacock’s exclusive Chiefs-Dolphins NFL wild-card game in January, Peacock added 2.8 million subs, according to Antenna.

So: How many new subscribers did Peacock add thanks to its Olympic momentum?

NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus, when pressed onstage at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in New York last week, wasn’t ready to give the number. “Those will come out at the end of October in our earnings call.”

But he did say, “We added a lot of subs. Some churn, obviously, along the way. But we added more subs than we thought. Churn’s about where we thought, so we’ll end up with more than we planned.”

Churn, the rate at which new subscribers cancel their subscription, has become a key metric in the streaming wars, and it has spiked in recent years amid a binge-and-cancel trend. Peacock’s churn as of August was 7%, according to Antenna Research.

About 25% of U.S. streaming subscribers have canceled three or more subscriptions in just the last two years, The New York Times reported in April, citing Antenna Research.

Meanwhile, Peacock’s coverage of the Olympics gave the streamer a 39% bump in monthly viewership in August, according to Nielsen. Peacock also spiked from a 1.5% share of all TV viewing in July to a 2.1% share in August.

Reflecting on Peacock’s Paris success, Lazarus said, “In Tokyo, we claimed we were going to be the streaming home of the Olympics, and we weren’t ready.” For Paris, “We were ready in that we streamed everything live, we were ready in that we had innovations like Gold Zone, like multiview, like Al Michaels. So we were ready and it delivered; it worked relatively flawlessly.”