According to a new report by Variety, Comcast Xfinity customers is ending its free access to the Peacock Premium streaming. In March of 2021, WWE signed a deal with Peacock worth over a $1 billion for all WWE Network programming in the United States, including all monthly pay-per-view events to be made available on Peacock for next five years.
Currently, Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Flex Box customers have been eligible to get Peacock Premium with ads for no additional cost, which is priced at at $4.99 per month if you don’t mid ads, and $9.99 for some extra content, off-line downloads and no ads. The offers also has been extend to subscribers with Cox Communications’ Contour service.
The report notes that Jeff Shell, CEO of NBCUniversal, said making Peacock available to Comcast cable and broadband customers for no extra charge helped the the streaming service achieve traction after it launched in mid-2020. Shell, who spoke on Tuesday at the Credit Suisse 24th Annual Communications Conference, said “At some point we’ll roll that to paid.” Shell also revealed that NBCU has largely completed its upfront selling cycle with volume flat, as declines due to “cord cutting were offset by [higher] pricing and Peacock for us.”
Shell also touted Peacock’s dual-revenue business model, which for both ad-supported and no-ad options. “Clearly we picked the right business model – now everyone is diving into the pool with us” – in reference to Netflix and Disney+ planing to launch ad-supported tiers. Also according to Shell, NBCU earns more from advertising on Peacock than from subscription fees and is seeing CPMs “at the broadcast level.” Shell also said In two years, they have basically caught up to Paramount. It should be noted that Paramount+ had 39.6 million global streaming subscribers at the end of Q1, while Peacock reported 28 million monthly active accounts, with 13 million of those being paid subscribers.
Other notes in the report indicated that as of the end of the first quarter of 2022, Peacock had 28 million monthly active accounts, including 13 million paid subscribers, which was a quarterly gain of 4 million paying Peacock Premium customers. However, executives at Comcast cautioned the Q1 growth was largely driven by Peacock’s live streaming of the Super Bowl and the Beijing Winter Olympics during the quarter.
As of this report, a representative for NBCU’s Peacock did not have information on when the free Peacock Premium promotional offer for its cable customers would be ending.