‘The Hub We’ve Never Had’: Peacock Finally Figures out the Olympics

In July 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was raging, the NBA was about to restart play in the bubble at Walt Disney World in Florida, and the Cleveland baseball and Washington, D.C., football teams announced they would change their names after the death of George Floyd sparked anti-racist protests around the country.

That’s when NBC released Peacock.

The streamer launched July 15 of that year. Back then, it was known for being the only streaming service with most of its offerings available for free (and its paid content only $4.99 per month), and featuring content like Premier League matches and NBC staples like 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Law & Order. Peacock was supposed to open with the Tokyo Olympics—which got pushed to 2021—with early access to the opening and closing ceremonies.

But by the time the Olympics rolled around the next year, Peacock simply wasn’t ready. The streamer offered only a small number of live events, which cost an extra five dollars to watch. Most of its content was replays or highlight shows, and the platform itself was glitchy and confusing.

“We had Peacock in play and it was part of our coverage in Tokyo, and then again in Beijing, but in Tokyo, frankly, we didn’t do a very good job for our customers,” Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, said last month. “We didn’t exactly deliver what we said we were going to deliver and we have learned a lot from that.”

Six months later, Peacock was back for the Beijing Winter Olympics, with every minute of the Games available on the service. The streamer announced its best 18-day stretch ever, but it was only an 8% increase in usage from the Summer Olympics.

Today, Peacock looks much different than it did just a few years ago and plays a much larger role in the Paris Olympics. Yes, NBC shoved every single sport on the platform as well as original shows. But it also greatly improved its interface and added Gold Zone, a whip-around show hosted by the longtime face of NFL RedZone, Scott Hanson. NBC has figured out how to turn Peacock into a high-functioning, comprehensive Olympics hub, and for the first time, fans actually improve their better viewing experience by paying up.

“To me, Peacock is finally, shall we say, strutting its stuff,” media consultant Tim Hanlon tells Front Office Sports. “As television has become ‘what I want to watch, when I watch to watch, how I want to watch,’ I think this is the first full-fledged NBC sports delivery of the Olympics where that is the case for these Games.”

NBC took a big chance on Peacock, which reported only 33 million paying subscribers in the second quarter of the year. (Compare that to Netflix, in the lead among streaming services with 277.65 million in the same time period.) Peacock also raised prices for both of its tiers by $2 a month ahead of the Games to $7.99 for the lower level and $13.99 for full access.

But so far, things have been paying off for the platform, with way more people tuning in to Paris than Tokyo. Overall, NBC’s Friday viewership was up 60% from 2021, and Saturday was up 83%. Peacock alone drew 2.5 million viewers for the opening ceremony and 4.7 million Saturday. It’s the biggest audience Peacock has ever recorded outside of an average of 23 million viewers for a Chiefs-Dolphins wild-card game.

Peacock, for the first time at a Summer Olympics, gives viewers access to every single world feed, which are the International Olympic Committee’s camera angles sent to broadcasters around the world. In addition to searching for any live sports they want, viewers can watch replays and get curated highlight videos from an AI-generated Al Michaels. Fans aren’t limited to what NBC wants to show on its main broadcast channel—although that often U.S.-heavy offering is still available—which opens viewers to “the totality” of the Olympic Games, as Hanlon says.

“Peacock has inadvertently become the wayfinding mechanism for anything that’s going on with the Olympics, inclusive of NBC and inclusive of the cable channels,” Hanlon says. “It’s kind of like the hub that we’ve never had before. In many respects, it’s the modern starting point for watching the Olympics.”

The most impressive part of Peacock’s Olympic coverage is undoubtedly Gold Zone, bouncing back and forth between key moments of all different events. Fans and media members have quickly latched on to the platform, which is hosted by Hanson starting at 2 p.m. Eastern time, but Matt Iseman, Jac Collinsworth, and Andrew Siciliano earlier in the day. 

My colleague, FOS media reporter Michael McCarthy, puts it this way: “Streaming has been hit or miss in previous Olympics. But Peacock’s Gold Zone is showing how it should be done. Led by NFL Network RedZone host Scott Hanson, the Gold Zone is fast, informative, and fun. Hanson got so jacked on Monday he cut his hand while pounding on a table. It’s addictive. And has quickly become appointment TV.”

Hanlon calls Gold Zone the “ultimate expression” of how the younger generation of fans want to watch sports, and he calls the approach “arguably overdue” at the Olympics. That’s because younger audiences, especially with the rise of fantasy sports and betting, want access to more and more information, players, and highlights. In other words, “all of the stuff that used to be the exclusive domain of the director in the truck,” he says.

In another appeal to younger audiences, Peacock has introduced the ManningCast style of watch parties during games with popular podcast host Alex Cooper. That’s on top of an existing slate of Olympic series and shows on the platform, including one with hosts Kenan Thompson and Kevin Hart.

“Younger audiences want to be more actively participating in the game,” Hanlon says. “That scares the bejesus out of television producers and traditional networks because that’s ceding control to the consumer, and the consumer may not follow the traditional value proposition that advertisers are depending on.”

Peacock is keeping advertisers happy with its Olympic coverage by heading to normal commercial breaks during games and doing the same every so often during Gold Zone (an adjustment for RedZone fans, and for Hanson). Given positive early viewership numbers, Peacock’s Olympic coverage could change the market for how valuable ads sold to streamers actually are.

Hanlon argues the service still could be improved. For example, Peacock didn’t convert itself entirely to Olympic coverage during the Games, but instead threw up a promotional box on its regular home page and a navigational tab at the top of the screen. Because of the tangled web of international sports rights, Peacock’s customer base is largely concentrated in the U.S.

So what’s next for Peacock, or other streamers wanting to replicate its Olympic success? It’s possible to imagine a whip-around show in other sporting events with concurrent action, like the U.S. Open or World Cup. Some leagues like the NFL and MLS already have one. Perhaps streamers will come to dominate the ManningCast space to complement the main broadcast, like Cooper’s show.

Whatever the kinds of content will be, Hanlon says it’s important that streamers follow Peacock’s example of actually giving viewers better ways to watch the Olympics, rather than just trying to win the war for media rights that makes them just another destination to watch a regular broadcast.

“Most streamers that get these sports packages are really just taking these games to present linearly as an exclusive. As a, ‘You must subscribe to watch it.’ The Olympics, in this case, is much more than just that. You can see the Olympics on cable and on broadcast TV, but you get a much richer experience in streaming. I think that’s the nut that Peacock and others in streaming have to get to, is, how can you make the experience worth the subscription?” Hanlon says. “Take advantage of the expansive space that a linear channel alone can’t bring.”