With a spin-out of its legacy cable networks pending, Comcast’s NBCUniversal is preparing for an entertainment future more squarely centered on broadcast assets and its Peacock streaming service, with hopes that upcoming NBA rights provide a slam dunk.
Comcast reported second quarter 2025 results Thursday that included customer losses for broadband and traditional pay TV video as well as improved financial performance at NBCU’s Peacock.
Media segment EBITDA increased 9.3% year-over-year in Q2 to $1.48 billion, which Comcast said was driven by Peacock.
Peacock quarterly revenue grew 18% yoy to $1.2 billion while adjusted EBITDA losses for the streaming service improved by about $250 million year-over-year, totaling $101 million in Q2. Peacock revenue in the period included $427 million in advertising and $759 million in distribution.
The streaming service didn’t report net-new subscribers in the period, with its subscriber tally holding flat from Q1 at 41 million (although up from the 33 million it had in Q2 2024).
On Thursday’s earnings call, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh emphasized its combination of entertainment and live sports as driving results across NBC and Peacock.
The company closed what he touted as NBCU’s “most successful upfront ever,” including record total sales and its largest sports ad dollar commitments to-date, where the NBA undoubtedly provided an assist. Peacock too was held up as a standout, up more than 20% year-over-year and representing over one-third of NBCU’s total upfront ad sales volume.
The exec attributed the strong upfront results to NBCU’s content lineup in the pipe for 2026, where it has several tentpole events. Those include the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, Super Bowl LX and the NBA All-Star game in February, The FIFA World Cup on Telemundo in June, elections and BravoCon in November.
Peacock and NBC are also poised to get NBA games this fall following NBCU’s 11-year media rights deal with the league starting with the 2025-2026 season. In preparation NBCU has already built out NBA fan-focused user experience and advertiser features on the Peacock platform.
Cavanagh on Thursday also cited engagement with entertainment content on Peacock during Q2, where it expects to build on momentum.
Notably, Love Island USA, a reality TV series exclusive to Peacock, was called out as providing a boost in Q2 and was the top streaming reality series during the entirety of its Season 7 run.
Cavanagh said, Love Island USA “attracted a significant number of first-time subscribers. And importantly, two-thirds of those new paying customers went on to engage with additional content, driving a lift in overall consumption across the platform.”
Just how many of those first-time subs came in the quarter is unclear as, again, Peacock’s subscriber tally was flat compared to Q1. But further speaking to Love Island’s impact, on the earnings call Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong noted that in a Q2 that’s seasonally light sports on sports, the ability to hold sub numbers steady was driven in part “by the wildly popular new season of Love Island USA.”
Next year, Peacock won’t have that same Q2 sports lull thanks to the addition of the NBA. And having a full year of sports programming is one of the key positives for NBCU in securing the media rights deal, per Cavanagh.
NBA brings expenses and hopefully Peacock subs
As Comcast prepares for the upcoming NBA season, the company also just upped the price of Peacock by $3 per month for new users and effective next month for existing subscribers.
Cavanagh said the price increase was in part to better reflect the premium content Peacock offers, including pay-1 movies and next-day Bravo and NBC content, but also to position NBCU better in Q4 once it launches the NBA – as that will come with higher sports programming expenses for the company, “particularly in the first year of the NBA contract when we absorb the full impact of adding these new rights.”
Asked by an equity analyst about the outlook for Peacock ahead and its moving pieces with price bumps and NBA rights coming in, Cavanagh pointed to a few quarters out, once its spin-off of legacy cable networks and certain assets into a standalone entity called Versant is expected to be complete.
“We'll then have a media business made up of NBC Broadcast, Bravo, Telemundo as well as Peacock that really are completely symbiotic, leveraging the strengths of the entertainment business, which is both scripted, and reality entertainment as well as sports and news” and Pay-1 movies, he said. It’s a strategy that they see combining NBC’s broadcast strengths alongside a streaming vehicle with Peacock. A report also recently surfaced that NBCU is exploring launching a sports-focused cable network.
In the next three or so years, Cavanagh noted it’ll also be able to renegotiate distribution or carriage deals – at which time NBA programming will be involved - to “capture more revenues on that side.”
“And over multiple years, we'll have the chance to rebalance various programming commitments for Peacock and NBC at large,” he added.
The NBA is both a big piece and big investment for the company’s ambitions for entertainment – previously describing plans to use the professional basketball media rights as “launch pad” for Peacock and earlier cited expectations for the NBA to be a “major driver of subscription growth in 2025.”
Those subscriber expectations appear a little tempered or perhaps further on the horizon based on comments made Thursday.
“Over time, the next few years, we'll have the opportunity to drive Peacock subscribers higher as we leverage NBA and other content and the continuation of consumer trends, moving from the linear ecosystem to the streaming ecosystem,” Cavanagh said.
But with hopes the NBA will bring new subscribers to Peacock and streaming, he said a lot of thought is being put in around the entertainment side and “how to build things beyond sports around the new audience.”
New audiences could be welcomed, as on the Comcast side, traditional video customer losses continued at a clip in Q2.
Comcast keeps losing pay TV customers
During the three-month period Comcast lost 325,000 net pay TV video customers, compared to 419,000 in Q2 2024.
It hasn’t been able to stem video customer defections like cable peer Charter – which last week reported video losses of 80,000 – which while still a loss is significantly less than the 408,000 Charter shed the year prior.
Comcast’s existing pay TV base now stands at 11.8 million, down from the 13.2 million it had at the end of Q2 2024.
Still, video continues to contribute revenue – even slightly more than Comcast’s domestic broadband operations did in the quarter (broadband also saw customer net losses, totaling 226,000 in Q2, while mobile had its best quarter with 378,000 wireless additions and revenue up 17.3% yoy). But unlike broadband or mobile, the amount of Comcast’s video revenue contribution keeps shrinking. Video revenue in Q2 totaled $6.7 billion, down 4.2% yoy.
Within the company’s Content & Experiences business, media segment revenue was up 1.8% yoy to $6.4 billion, attributed mainly to higher international networks and domestic distribution.
NBCU’s studios segment also saw revenue growth, which increased 8% yoy to $2.4 billion but was more than offset by increased operating expenses that totaled $2.3 billion in the period. That factor led to a 31% decrease in studios Adjusted EBITDA, which was $85 million in Q2.
The Theme Parks unit delivered $2.3 billion in revenue, up 18.9% yoy, and 4.1% growth in quarterly adjusted EBITDA.
Comcast Q2 consolidated revenue of $30.3 billion was up 2.1% yoy while Adjusted EBITDA increased 1.1% to $10.3 billion.
Looking ahead, post-spin out of Versant, executives also indicated Comcast will be in a better financial position, having shed certain parts of the business that were no longer growth drivers.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts noted it had previously called out six growth businesses, including around broadband, that now account for about 60% of the company’s revenues. After the spin-off, those businesses will account for 65% of Comcast revenues, and if trends continue, a couple of years later will be 70% of revenues, he said.
“So all of a sudden, it’s a very different narrative, where half your company is declining and half your company is growing, to where 70% of your company is growing,” Roberts explained. “And each of those businesses has a runway of growth that we’re excited by.”