Key Points
- Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh said Peacock’s strategy centers on U.S. growth, with limited ambitions for global expansion despite rivals’ international scale.
- Peacock counts about 44 million subscribers and remains key to Comcast’s sports distribution, including the Olympics and Sunday Night Basketball.
- Comcast is pursuing domestic growth through bundles and partnerships, including StreamSaver and discounted packages with Apple TV and Netflix.
Comcast’s streaming service Peacock is focused primarily on growing its domestic service and has few aspirations for global dominance, the company’s co-CEO said at an investor conference this week.
On Tuesday, Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh said the company doesn’t feel disadvantaged by committing to a strategy of domestic growth and distribution for Peacock, even as someone of its peers have broader aspirations to bring their streaming platforms to a worldwide audience.
“Clearly, they have different strategies for different players,” Cavanagh said. “But in our case, domestic is our path.”
Peacock has around 44 million subscribers, putting it on an equal footing with services like Apple TV Plus and the Walt Disney Company’s Hulu. Apple TV Plus is available in more than 200 countries and territories around the world, and Disney is in the process of winding down Hulu as a standalone service in favor of distributing its content through a tile on Disney Plus in the U.S. and other markets.
While Peacock might be focused on stateside growth, that doesn’t mean Comcast isn’t playing in the international streaming space. The company offers Peacock’s content library in dozens of European countries through a joint venture called SkyShowtime, which also involves commitments from Paramount. SkyShowtime’s streaming platform uses the same technical stack as Peacock, The Desk previously reported.
Peacock’s shows and movies are also offered to customers of Comcast’s Sky satellite and streaming services in the United Kingdom and Ireland through different Sky- and Now TV-branded channels and apps. And content from Peacock is available in France, India and eastern Asia through different distribution partnerships or as part of a broader service backed by Comcast’s NBC Universal.
Peacock is becoming a bigger part of Comcast’s media and entertainment business, serving as a cornerstone of the company’s distribution strategy for its premium sports programming like the recently-wrapped Winter Olympic Games and the newly-launched Sunday Night Basketball games. NBC’s entire portfolio of sports programming is offered through the service, and Peacock has exclusive rights to a few other tournaments and live events throughout the year.
As Comcast continues to invest in Peacock, the company is looking at novel ways to scale the service domestically, Cavanagh said.
“One of the roads ahead is to look at taking the benefit that Peacock creates in terms of a full portfolio and seeing places where through bundles and partnerships with others we have a path to ongoing growth,” he affirmed on Tuesday.
Some of those partnerships and bundles have already come together: For about two years, Comcast has offered Peacock through its own streaming bundle called StreamSaver, which includes Apple TV and Netflix.
StreamSaver is only available to Comcast’s Xfinity subscribers, but a similar bundle allows streamers to bundle Apple TV with Peacock Premium at a discounted rate without Xfinity service. Walmart Plus customers also have the activate a subscription to Peacock Premium at no extra cost, or they can activate a comparable plan from Paramount Plus as part of their membership.
