People are actually paying for Peacock

According to Comcast’s latest earnings, around 15 million people are actually paying for Peacock. Despite the many, many ways to get it for free. Not to mention its free tier in general.

Peacock’s total customers has increased nearly 70% year to date. And have added about 2 million paid customers in the previous quarter, bringing it to 15 million. That’s not to shabby, but still far behind the likes of Disney+, Hulu and Netflix.

Comcast launched Peacock as a way to help stop the bloodshed from traditional cable TV, as more and more people opt to cut the cord. Comcast owns NBCUniversal, so it has a lot of TV shows and movies that it can put on Peacock. Though, Comcast won’t be able to take full advantage of that until the Hulu deal is over in 2024.

Currently, Comcast owns about 33% of Hulu. Disney owns the remaining 64% after it purchased Fox a few years ago. Disney is looking to buy Comcast out when the deal expires (or sooner) in 2024. However, Comcast has also said that they would buy Hulu outright if they had a choice.

Peacock is doing well, but still behind the competition

As mentioned, Peacock is still well behind the competition. With Disney+ having 152.1 million subscribers, Hulu at 46.2 million subscribers and even Paramount+ has 43 million subscribers. Peacock has about 30 million monthly active users, and roughly half of them pay for the service.

Peacock is looking to expand, and it wants to use sports to do that. Peacock already has the WWE which includes its entire library of content and PPVs each month. As well as Sunday Night Football, Premiere League and a few other things. But Peacock wants more. It did also win rights to Big Ten Football starting in 2023. Obviously, it won’t get all games, but it will get some exclusive games to go along side its deal with Notre Dame Football.

So things are looking up for Peacock.