Coinciding with its Upfront presentation in New York City on Monday, NBCUniversal unveiled a suite of new user experience features for its Peacock SVOD meant to engage fans when professional basketball joins the platform this fall with the NBA 2025-2026 season – and prime a younger and more diverse audience for advertisers to reach.
Last year NBCU inked an 11-year rights deal that brings the NBA to NBC and Peacock, with the latter offering 100 regular season games and 40 playoff games in the upcoming season.
Peacock counts 41 million paid subscribers and during quarterly earnings executives discussed how they intend to use the NBA as “launch pad” for the SVOD. Now it’s bringing interactive game experiences, real-time data overlays and athlete-first features to help make that happen both for viewers and brands.
In a press briefing ahead of the Upfront event, Peter Lazarus, EVP of NBC Sports, Advertising & Partnerships, said that nearly 40% of all NBA inventory is moving to streaming this year, both bringing the league to new fans but also providing brand opportunities on Peacock, which reaches nearly 100 million monthly ad-supported active users.
“By adding the NBA, we’re bringing year-round sports, including 129 nights in prime time to both advertisers and viewers,” Lazarus said, adding Peacock offers over 7,500 hours of live sports.
Peacock gained valuable experience from past live events, including the Paris 2024 Olympic games – an event which brought new user experience features to the streaming platform and generated viewership and significant ad revenue for NBCU.
Now NBCU is building on what worked for past live events and leveraging tight integration between production and product to unlock new experiences.
The goal, according to John Jelley, SVP of Product and User Experience, Global Streaming at NBCU, is to create the most engaging NBA streaming experience for both casual and avid fans by integrating production and product in a way that also creates seamless connections for brands that want to reach audiences.
Upping interactivity
In terms of what worked from previous live event coverage, Jelley said during the press briefing that it learned fun interactions really resonate with fans, not only on mobile but the TV screen as well.
To that end, Peacock is introducing a real-time streaming experience dubbed Peacock Scorecard that’s described as “bingo meets fantasy sports,” available on mobile and TV.
With the Scorecard feature, fans are presented with a notification asking if they want to make predictions and can scroll to choose a game card based on a team or theme and then earn points depending what happens live during a game.
The interactive feature has personalized Scorecard alerts that keep fans informed about how they’re doing throughout the game and points they’ve racked up, as well as competition against other players. Those who are top ranked potentially get to see their username on-air as part of a season leader board.
Another way Peacock wants to get fans engaged straight away is with “Live in Browse”– this is where when users come into the Peacock home page, NBA game play video will start playing right away as viewers browse and the SVOD’s adding sports data hooks in hopes of reeling in viewers.
For example, the live video would play in the browsable hero spot with a data stream on the left showing a featured player and how many points he has. It’s meant to give viewers a taste of what’s happening on the court and pull them in. And brands can get in on the action with a ‘Sponsored by’ placement on Instant Access unit. For the mobile experience, Peacock is offering highlights in vertical video form, both for live games, replays, and action across the league.
Performance View
Peacock is also delivering real-time stats and predictive overlays with augmented reality to give both casual and avid NBA fans insights into game action with a feature called Peacock Performance View.
This is an optional real-time extra layer that users can choose for the game that breaks down the game action and player performance. For more casual fans it can show information like player names and all-stars, a live shot chart or three-point shooting percentages.
Predictive overlays and augmented reality also come into play with data dynamically updated as the game plays out across the court, providing a “live read of risk and reward,” according to Jelley, such as the chance of making a shot from the exact spot a player is standing, calculated in real-time.
Aiming to attract younger, diverse audience
With new features it’s looking to attract younger and diverse viewers to the platform that brands want to reach.
“We’re going to really lean into attracting an audience that’s younger, more diverse and has new behaviors. They’re used to watching in a more non-traditional way,” Jelley said at the briefing, adding they’re doing so on more screens and noting NBCU wants to make sure the Peacock experience is unique.
One of those ways, according to Jelley, is by focusing on “athlete-first experiences” that show cultural value “from the sneakers to the music to the outfits they take to the court.”
And teed up for mid-season is a new feature called Courtside Live, That experience will be available for Peacock’s exclusive Monday night games, giving fans different views of the match-up that they can toggle between and view simultaneously with picture-in-picture on mobile and multiview on TV.
Multiview on Peacock was introduced and saw success with for the Paris Olympics. During the Olympics, multiview extended viewing time and 25% of users watched using the feature, Jelley noted.
Now Peacock is expanding capabilities for the NBA, where users will be able to see different angles on the court, as well views from dedicated cameras focused on things like player arrivals, what gear they’re wearing, pre-game shooting, special player spotlights and courtside reactions from celebrities.
It’s also returning earlier features that allow fans to catch up with key plays and can’t miss highlights.
And of course, as NBCU makes its pitch to advertisers for Upfronts, in addition to traditional ad spots for NBA coverage, each feature provides opportunities for brands to align or sponsor alongside the action.
“The NBA goes along with the other great properties we have…advertisers have come to us, they’ve come early,” said Lazarus during the press briefing in terms of how the features play into NBCU’s Upfront strategy. “We give them a way to send their message out quarter by quarter and to attach to our incredible content."