Peacock, the streaming platform owned by NBCUniversal, saw its quarterly revenue exceed $1 billion for the first time, in the fourth financial quarter of 2023.
Comcast, NBC's parent company, also unveiled that the service added three million (net) subscribers during that period, ending Q4 with 31 million paying subscribers after Q3 concluded with that figure set at 28 million.
The quarterly revenue figure, meanwhile, represented a 57% rise (although despite this, the NBCU loss in terms of Peacock still came to $825 million).
Jason Armstrong, chief financial officer at Peacock, has said that the growth in subscribers is partly due to the site’s coverage of American football, from both the NFL and the Big Ten conference from US college sports.
Earlier this month, Peacock was the exclusive home (aside from markets local to the teams involved) for an NFL playoff encounter between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins.
That fixture drew an average of 23 million viewers exclusively on Peacock, and an average minute audience of 3.1 million viewers for the service. The game was the first-ever to be covered exclusively by Peacock - so far this season, all NFL games to which NBC has rights have been covered on linear TV as well.
Mike Cavanagh, Comcast president, has now said during an analyst earnings call that “Our investment in the network [Peacock] and our technology platforms built over decades enabled us to shine, delivering a seamless experience on the internet and Peacock, demonstrating that our company is in an excellent position to win in this era of high bandwidth.”
Overall, Peacock made a loss of around $2.75 billion in 2023, down from $3 billion previously.
On this front, Armstrong said that in terms of losses, 2023 marked the high point for Peacock, “and for 2024 we expect to show meaningful improvements in losses.”
Aside from the NFL, Peacock subscribers have access to a range of live sports including top-tier soccer, rugby, golf, baseball, and motor racing.
During the previous third quarter, Peacock added four million subscribers and reported YoY revenue growth of 64%.
