Peacock, Fresh Off NFL Playoff Bump, Eyes Subscriber Retention 

First came the boom for Peacock and parent company Comcast from a history-making exclusive live stream of an NFL playoff game. Now comes the much harder task of keeping new subscribers. 

The streaming platform’s coverage of the Kansas City Chiefs-Miami Dolphins wild-card game on Jan. 13 indeed generated a series of unprecedented results, including an average audience of 23 million that was the largest online in U.S. history, and the addition of 2.8 million subscribers in the days leading up to the game, according to Antenna, representing the “single-biggest subscriber acquisition event” measured by the industry research firm. 

Comcast furthered that optimism on Thursday with quarterly results detailing an 11% rise in Peacock subscribers, to 31 million as of the end of 2023, compared to the prior quarter. Peacock revenues reached $1 billion, up 52% from the comparable period a year ago, while adjusted losses improved by 16% to $825 million. 

Please Don’t Go

But for company officials, a key priority is reducing churn among both those new customers and existing ones.

“At the scale we’ve gotten to, what’s important is to keep people engaged with the platform and all the content that’s there, not the wild-card game unto itself,” said Mike Cavanagh, Comcast’s president. “So the job always is to get more people in the door and get everybody that’s already in the door re-engaged.”

Early results suggest some progress there, as Cavanagh said there were “record levels” of hours viewed in the days immediately following the Chiefs-Dolphins game. Promotion is also beginning to ramp up for the upcoming Paris Olympics, which will be streamed extensively on Peacock and which are being eyed by Comcast as another key tool to increase subscribers and consumption on the platform.