Survey: Almost Half of Viewers Won’t Bother Watching the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics on Peacock

For the first time in its nearly two years of existence, Peacock will be streaming every minute of every live event of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics for its Premium subscribers ($4.99/month with ads or $9.99/month without ads). Because of this, it’s obvious that NBCUniversal is banking on a significant subscription boost for the SVOD.

This may not be the case, however, because according to a survey conducted by Whip Media, 48% of survey respondents said they don’t plan on watching the Winter Games on Peacock.

Last summer was a mess for Peacock when its U.S.-only Olympics coverage didn’t cover nearly enough live events and replays were annoyingly delayed. The Tokyo Games drew the lowest audience for a Summer Olympics since 1988… not a good look for NBC.

Whip Media’s survey of U.S. TV Time app users (age 13+) shows that nearly 44% of respondents said they are Peacock subscribers.

Being that 79% of survey respondents said they use Peacock once a month or more frequently, you’d think that the number for Beijing Olympics watchers would be just as high.

The discrepancy in figures implies that some of Peacock’s more frequent users won’t be taking advantage of their access to Beijing Olympics broadcasts on the NBCU-owned streamer, despite having the ability to stream all NBC’s Olympics live coverage, opening and closing ceremonies, competition replays, medal ceremonies, highlight clips, a daily studio show, and even NBC’s nightly primetime show. This is a huge red flag that Peacock desperately needs to increase engagement.

However, another reason for the low viewership of the Winter Olympics could be the fact that there are concerns surrounding China’s human rights record. For others, it’s simply due to a disinterest in winter sports. Almost 76% of subscribers who don’t plan on watching the Winter Olympics on Peacock said they had no interest in the Winter Olympics, period. So there’s only so much that NBCU can do to get their numbers up.

Also, the reason behind the figures could be that some survey respondents just don’t have a Peacock Premium subscription, thus, they won’t be able to watch as much coverage on the service anyways. Another reason could be that the majority of TV Time users are under the age of 55, which means they most likely fall under an age group that is less generally interested in the Olympics than older viewers.

Comcast recently released its Q4 2021 Earnings which discloses that Peacock had 9 million paid subscribers and 24.5 million monthly users, up from 20 million in July.

The 2020 Games were a key driver for subscriptions, however, the downloads in Peacock’s mobile app only witnessed a short-lived bump. “Halloween Kills” was by far the most notable piece of content and was responsible for the download spike of nearly 290,600 on October 18, 2021.

It’s clear that more day-and-date premieres could be beneficial for Peacock’s growth but it’s doubtful that the Beijing Olympics will keep subscribers sticking around after the Games are over, especially if they only subscribe to the Premium tier for that reason.

Certain consumers not renewing their Peacock Premium subscriptions won’t help Peacock’s goal of breaking even by 2024. Also, the fact that many current users either don’t pay for the Premium tier or get the plan for free via a cable subscription, there’s some doubt on Peacock’s ability to meet that goal.