Comcast’s NBCUniversal saw improvement for its Peacock SVOD in Q1, gaining subscribers, growing revenue and narrowing losses after what was a year of fairly tepid subscriber growth. And executives plan to leverage sports – and the NBA in particular – as well as bundles, to continue trends of better monetization and more scale.
The 5 million subscribers Peacock added in the first three months of 2025 follows a pretty stagnant year in terms of customer growth for the streaming platform – adding the same number (5 million) for the full year 2024, with no change in subscribers from Q3 to Q4. After Q1 gains, Peacock’s total tally now stands at 41 million subscribers.
On Thursday’s earnings call Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong attributed to net additions in Q1 as driven by “entitlements from the Charter bundle” that was introduced at the end of the quarter and suggested inclusion in bundles is key for the streamer and its content strategy.
The boost from Charter stemmed an October carriage agreement between NBCU and Charter that included the addition of Peacock in the cable operator’s pay TV bundles at no extra charge to consumers.
“When we launched Peacock in 2020 we anticipated that bundling would become an important piece of the streaming ecosystem so we pursued a content strategy that would appeal to a broad audience,” Armstrong said Thursday.
To that end, he pointed to Peacock’s lineup of pay 1 films from the NBCU studio division, 80,000 hours of entertainment content with originals and next-day content from NBC broadcast and Bravo – and importantly, called the focus on sports “a critical piece of that strategy.”
Comcast President Mike Cavanagh also emphasized that sports “has been a key driver of Peacock,” saying it’s important for acquiring new subscribers and deepening engagement with existing users while also leading them to engage with non-sports content on the platform.
Peacock already counts multiple sports on its platform including NFL, Premiere League, Kentucky Derby, Big Ten and in 2024 had a big sporting event with the Paris Olympic Games (Comcast/NBCU in Q1 secured US media rights for Olympic Games through 2036 under a $3 billion deal). But this fall it’s poised to get professional basketball under an 11-year deal with the NBA that starts with the 2025-2026 season. NBCUniversal, alongside Disney and Amazon, secured media rights for streaming and TV broadcasts, in a package that Comcast is ponying up a reported $2.45 billion per year for as a holder in the larger $77 billion rights agreement.
And it doesn’t intend to let that investment go to waste.
“We continue to think that acquiring the rights to bring the NBA back to NBC and Peacock is a big deal. It's a big accomplishment, a big moment,” said Cavanagh.
By leaning into sports, he expects the SVOD to be on a continued trend of improved monetization, bigger scale and declining losses over time – while acknowledging the streamer joined a bit late when it launched five years ago.
He also noted that Peacock “fit hand-in-glove” with its other media assets – ie, Bravo and NBC broadcast - that aren’t being spun out into a separate publicly traded SpinCo entity, with content and rights across entertainment, news, sports, and reality.
Still analysts at MoffettNathanson have suggested that most major US streamers are stuck in their current rung on the streaming wars ladder (all notably behind leader Netflix) and while ad revenue helps, scale is needed to move the needle – which requires content investment.
“A profitable streaming service requires scale. Full stop,” wrote MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman in a February report. “It enables greater investment in content, which in turn enables greater engagement and subscriber growth. Scale begets scale.”
And while the firm expects all major US SVODs to increase scale and profitability over the next few years, including through international expansion, sans M&A it doesn’t anticipate any to break out of their current competitive peer group or reach heights projected for Netflix. And although the analyst said this makes the case for consolidation among smaller platforms, he warned against M&A for the sake of it.
“Peacock, Paramount+ and Max are not on track to reach the critical scale streaming requires on their own,” wrote Fishman earlier this year. “Yet, we also caution that simply combining services would likely not lead to a sum greater than the individual pieces — it may even be the opposite.”
As for Comcast and Peacock, asked by equity investment analysts about consolidation on Thursday’s earnings call, Cavanagh didn’t share any M&A intentions but reiterated that it’s open and interested in partnering or bundling with other services to expand the reach and uptake of the SVOD – where the company believes the broad audience appeal of Peacock programming “makes it a strong element of any future consumer bundle, whether that be through bundles or partnerships.”
NBCU is doing what it thinks will make Peacock strong in the consumer marketplace “and if opportunities come along to partner up in bundles or otherwise, we’ll be happy to consider those things if they make sense,” the exec added.
Streaming and premium content are two of Comcast’s six focus areas for investment and growth.
Q1 earnings results
In Q1 Comcast’s NBCUniversal saw media segment Adjusted EBITDA increase 21% to $1 billion, driven by Peacock. Without an exclusive NFL Wild Card game that it had in Q1 of last year, Peacock had lower programming costs in the first three months of 2025 ($976 million compared to $1.2 billion in Q1 2024) and the SVOD also grew revenue in the period on the back of improved monetization of paid subscribers.
Peacock revenue reached $1.2 billion, up 16% yoy, while Adjusted EBITDA losses of $215 million improved by $424 million compared to Q1 2024. Within Peacock, advertising revenue was up yoy to $414 million but declined compared to ad revenue generated in Q3 and Q4. Peacock distribution revenue was $763 million in the period.
Total Q1 media revenues grew 1.1% yoy to $6.4 billion. Within media, domestic advertising was down 6.8% to $1.89 billion in Q1, while distribution revenue was largely flat at $2.9 billion and international networks saw 13.9% growth to reach $1.1 billion. Executives attributed advertising declines to the volume and timing of sports content alongside tough comparisons to political ad revenue generated in prior quarters.
Studio revenue of $2.8 billion was up 3% yoy, driven by a 3.5% bump in content licensing revenue, which was partially offset by a 13.3% decline in theatrical revenue year-over-year.
Total content and experiences revenue, which includes theme parks, media and studios, grew less than 1% yoy, for a total of $10.46 billion in the period.
On the cable side of the house, Comcast continued to see its pay TV base shrink.
Q1 domestic video customer net losses were 427,000 – representing a small improvement from the 487,000 pay TV subs lost in Q1 2024 but an uptick from each of the other three quarters last year. Comcast’s pay TV base now stands at about 12.1 million customers.
Pay TV still contributed $6.7 billion in Q1 revenue but marked a 5.4% decline year-over-year. Total Q1 residential connectivity and platforms revenue of $17.6 billion was down 1.3% yoy as the company saw declines in video, other and advertising revenue.
Comcast Q1 total consolidated revenue of $29.89 billion was in line with the same quarter a year ago. Quarterly consolidated Adjusted EBITDA grew 2% yoy to $9.5 billion.