Peacock Gained Millions of Customers During Exclusive NFL Wild Card Game, But How Does it Keep Them?
NBCUniversal executives acknowledge that retaining customers is the next challenge for the service, which is building scale steadily.
Despite all of the progress that Peacock has made over the past year, the streamer still has a ways to go in order to achieve the all-important status of being profitable. Peacock added 3 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2023, and another 2.8 million signed up just to watch the streamer’s exclusive NFL Wild Card game on Jan. 13. But during the company’s conference call to discuss its Q4 2023 earnings, executives from NBCUniversal’s parent company Comcast acknowledged that the challenge is not only in getting new customers signed up but keeping them signed up.
- Peacock will get “Oppenheimer,” which led all movies with 13 Oscar nominations in February.
- The streamer will also offer every event of the 2024 Summer Olympics live.
- The real key to engagement for Peacock will be new, scripted originals to go alongside its various other programming.
More Customers, More Problems?
The modest, but steady, growth at Peacock stands apart from bigger streamers in the industry like Netflix, which added over 13 million customers last quarter. Despite this, Peacock is managing to narrow down its losses, and at least one forecast predicts that the streamer will be profitable by the first quarter of 2025, if not sooner.
Even so, Comcast and NBCU know that they still have work to do with the fledgling streamer. Comcast president Mike Cavanagh spoke with Wall Street analysts during the company’s earnings conference call on Thursday and acknowledged that while the company was thrilled with the new customers it gained in Q4 and thanks to Peacock’s Wild Card game, just bringing novel subscribers in was only half the goal.
“We would expect to see increase in paid subs [for the game],” Cavanagh said. “We’re focused now on retention of the subs that came in right around the game … What’s important is it’s both the subs that came in during the game and the engagement of the people that were already on the platform. So engagement and retention is really going to be focused on what’s coming next.”
How Does Peacock Retain Customers for the Long Haul?
Outwardly, Peacock appears to have everything it needs to keep customers who subscribe to the service engaged. It has a robust selection of library content, including audience favorites like “The Office,” “Parks and Rec,” “30 Rock” and others. Library content is incredibly popular, especially with women, and it’s crucial for streamers to have a good selection of it if they want customers to stay engaged.
Live sports are also a great way to keep streaming subscribers engaged, and Peacock has a big inventory in this category as well. Peacock will stream every event of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris live, as well as football and basketball from the Big Ten, Notre Dame football, auto racing, “Sunday Night Football” and much more this year. Peacock has sports to stream at every time of year, and could even be in pursuit of the NBA.
More live sports, including more exclusive NFL games, could be a key to boosting engagement. But what Peacock is really missing at the moment is a wide variety of original, scripted content. Much of this dearth can be blamed on the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which delayed productions of original series intended both for Peacock and NBC. The good news is that the streamer is still getting Universal movies like “Oppenheimer,” which is a favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Picture this year.
Studies show that diverse, representative original series is a great help in retaining streaming customers, so that’s one area Peacock should look to expand its catalog. Binge-releasing these series could also be a good tactic for Peacock to follow; one survey found that 70% of millennials said they’d be more likely to keep a streaming service that uses the binge release format instead of week-to-week.
The Peacock-exclusive NFL Wild Card game brought more signups to Peacock than any single sports event has for any streaming service in history. Getting those customers’ money for one month is an attractive proposition, but it’s far better for Peacock to keep them in the long haul, and creating a variety of new, original titles is a good way for the service to boost its retention rates.
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,” and “The Office,” as well as original hits like “Poker Face” and “Bel-Air.” You can also watch live sports including NFL, MLB, WWE, Olympics, Premier League, NASCAR, French Open, College Football and Basketball, and PGA Tour. Premium Plus subscribers can stream their local NBC feed in all 210 markets.