The Peacock can do the cartwheel, but it stays away from its main competitors.
With 22 million subscribers at the end of March, it is not yet able to compete with the behemoths of the sector, although its progress has reached nearly 10 million additional subscribers in one year.
Peacock has relied on a hybrid model since its launch, mixing an offer with advertising and an offer without advertising, allowing it to achieve 48% of its cumulative turnover over the period 2021-2023 with advertising revenue.
Peacock’s real problem is the relationship between its revenues and its losses, which remain very high. While the service has made $3.5 billion in revenue since 2021, it’s hit nearly $5 billion in losses. In the first quarter of 2023 alone, Peacock lost $704 million, its second largest quarterly loss.
The question is how Comcast plans to put Peacock on the path to profitability, given that the offering hasn’t begun its international rollout. An element of response was provided by Comcast executives during the exchange session with analysts: “We made the strategic decision to place our Pay-One window on Peacock, which really paid off late last year. We now have one of the most robust streaming movie offerings. The successes we achieve at the box office carry over to Peacock, which proves to be both an effective acquisition and retention tool.
Add to that the content strength of our television studio, which powers NBC content and has helped make us number one for many years, with all the procedurals from Dick Wolf and SNL, coupled with wildly popular content. on Bravo, and it all goes to Peacock the next day. Add to that our original programs, which we were just getting started on, shows like Poker Face, which launched and immediately went to the top of Nielsen’s list of streaming original programs in the United States. And we still have a lot more to come.
On top of all that, we have an incredible range of sports, Sunday Night Football, Premier League, and soon Big 10. We believe we have the right strategy for Peacock and it’s suited to our strengths: content from premium quality with a dual source of revenue, both advertising and subscription fees. We are encouraged by the results we have achieved so far, increasing the number of paid subscribers and engagement levels to approximately 20 hours per subscriber per month, which is fueling strong advertising revenue growth. We’re investing, but the results we’re seeing give us confidence that we’re on track for Peacock to break even and grow from there. »
Comcast therefore persists and signs and even forecasts that Peacock’s losses for 2023 will be around $3 billion. This should be the peak of losses for the platform, the improvement occurring from 2024, the year of the Olympics, rights held by NBC and therefore Peacock.