Peacock Adds 5M Subscribers in Q1 to Reach 41M, Will 2025 NBA Rights Launch It Higher?
This week, Peacock announced it added 5 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2025. But as Comcast leaders admit, that number was inflated a bit by Charter offering free Peacock subscriptions to Spectrum TV Select video customers.
Peacock announced the Charter freebie on March 27, so there were only four days during which those Spectrum users’ sign-ups would have counted. Charter has more than 12 million residential video customers, so we might expect Q2 to feature even more growth for Peacock. (Spectrum TV Select costs $95/month for the first month and $115/month after that.)
$7.99/mo.
My big issue with Peacock is that there’s not much to watch. Some of the sports are good and it was incredible during the Olympics. But Peacock has a terrible track record with its originals — Max, Netflix, and Apple TV+ are much better there. Peacock’s TV library is packed with lots of classic shows, but I can’t really binge more than three or four episodes of a sitcom before I need something new.
Related: Hallmark Content Leaving Peacock May 1
Will the NBA Make Peacock Essential?
As I write this, we’re a few games into the first round of the NBA playoffs, which means the clock is ticking until NBCUniversal gets its hands on 11 years of NBA rights.
According to the league, NBC and Peacock will split up to 100 regular-season games, and more than half will air on NBC on Sunday and Tuesday nights. On Tuesdays, NBC affiliates in the Eastern and Central time zones will get one game, while affiliates in Pacific and Mountain will get a different game. Peacock will have Monday doubleheaders and will show both Tuesday games.
Peacock will become essential in the playoffs, since the NBA says “at least half” of the approximately 28 games in the first two rounds will air on NBC. That means Peacock will be the exclusive home for many crucial contests.
NBA fans will probably be willing to join Peacock to keep tabs on the league. But the big question is whether the NBA games will be available on the ad-supported tier ($7.99), whether subscribers will need the ad-free tier ($13.99) to see basketball, or whether Peacock is going to jam everyone with a price hike to pay for the $2.5 billion deal.
Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said Peacock plans to “use (the) NBA as a launch pad to further scale Peacock and further monetize it,” so you can guess what that means.
Peacock still needs to do work to decide what kind of streaming service it wants to be. Sports and reruns and WWE and Bravo shows is kind of a weird mix. They should get a huge wave of subscribers when the NBA tips off next season. Let’s hope they have a few more shows worth watching when that day rolls around.
