Why Peacock’s presentation of live sports is my favorite feature
Why Peacock’s presentation of live sports is my favorite feature
Peacock doesn’t just come with a great selection of live sports, it also makes them incredibly easy to access.
From one perspective at least, the recent announcement by Peacock that it was raising its prices wasn’t a shock at all. The streaming service offers a giant selection of live sports, and that selection will only get bigger this fall, when the service will welcome live NBA games.
Sports rights are expensive, and NBCUniversal has to recoup that money somehow. It’s not going to take sports off of Peacock — that would take away one of the main reasons I have a subscription. Live sports are my favorite feature of Peacock, not just because of the quantity, but because of how easy the streamer makes it to access them.
Peacock’s home page makes it incredibly easy to find its live sports; all you have to do is click the Sports tab at the top of the screen to start browsing through them. The service also puts some sports content right on its home page, so you get to skip even more steps for marquee events.
Once you’re in the sports page, Peacock puts the row of Live & Upcoming events right near the top of the screen. That makes it much easier to jump into the action with your favorites, instead of trying to navigate to a specific sport’s content carousel to see if any programming is currently live.
Underneath the Live & Upcoming section, viewers can browse Latest Events, Highlights & News, a row of relevant sports and leagues, adding another layer of convenience. Say you came to Peacock to watch rugby, or tennis, or Big Ten basketball; this row will whisk you to the content hubs for those sports, leagues, and conferences to cut down on your browsing time and get you to your chosen programming more quickly. It even puts little Live badges on sports that have a live event going on currently.
Content rows dedicated to specific leagues come next, and these are not only packed with on-demand replays of events, but they also include shoulder programming relevant to that league. For example, the NFL content carousel also includes episodes of “PFT Live,” so viewers can get analysis and news right alongside the sports themselves.
The bigger the event, the more features Peacock surrounds it with. Take the Olympics, for example, in 2024, Peacock streamed every single event of the Paris games live. It also built a whip-around show called “Gold Zone” to take viewers to the best action at any given time, and launched a multiview that users can now watch with English Premier League matches, as well.
Alternate broadcasts have also streamed on Peacock with EPL games, and the streamer is constantly looking to add new wrinkles to its sports coverage to make it even more customer-friendly. I’d expect that trend to continue when the NBA arrives on Peacock later this year.
Peacock comes with the NFL’s “Sunday Night Football,” Big Ten football and basketball, English Premier League soccer, Notre Dame football, NASCAR Cup Series races, golf, tennis, horse racing, swimming, and a lot more. The quantity of sports on the streamer is truly impressive, but what I enjoy even more is the way the service presents live sports to customers, making them easy to find and a joy to watch.
Peacock
Peacock is a subscription video streaming service from NBCUniversal that includes original shows, blockbuster movies, and classic television series. Peacock is home to “Yellowstone,” “The Office,” and original hits like “Poker Face” and “Bel-Air.” You can also watch live sports and NBC programming, including the NFL, MLB, WWE, the Olympics, the Premier League, NASCAR, the French Open, college football and basketball, and the PGA Tour. Premium Plus subscribers can stream their local NBC feed in all 210 markets.