Comcast pumps money into Peacock streaming

Comcast Corp. plans to pump more money into its Peacock streaming service in hopes of competing with Netflix, Hulu and some of the other companies vying for viewers’ attention and eyes, executives said on Thursday (January 27). ), according to a Reuters report. .

Peacock’s streaming service comes in three varieties: a free, ad-supported version, a $5-a-month option with “lightweight ads,” and an ad-free version that costs $10 a month.

Comcast CEO Brian Robert said in a call with investors Thursday that the “vast majority” of paying Peacock subscribers use the $5 monthly service. The company plans to spend $3 billion on Peacock content this year, double its 2021 total, and $5 billion on domestic content over the next two years, it said, using cash flow from NBCUniversal to fund the $2.5 billion loss in EBITDA.

Comcast has said in the past that it will spend $2 billion on Peacock content in the streaming service’s first two years. Peacock had 24.5 million monthly active U.S. accounts at the end of 2021, up from more than 20 million at the end of July, including 9 million paid subscribers.

The company reported a 4.5% increase in cable revenue to $16.41 billion in 2021, growing its broadband, video, voice and other services by 3.3% to 34.2 million accounts, but it only gained 212,000 broadband customers in the last quarter, down 60.6%. of the same period in 2020.

Related: Bundled streaming services could be a response to consumer burnout and churn

In a recent conversation with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, Jeremy Simon, vice president, global streaming partnerships at VUBIQUITY, said streaming bundles that include non-content related services are also a key part of the future of streaming.

According to research by PYMNTS, standalone channels are still vying to be one of about three streaming services in an average household, sparking a deluge of cross-marketing and promotion.

Any player who gets into streaming can be confusing to consumers, Simon told Webster, but their approach offers clues as to what’s to come.

“The bundles we see in streaming or [direct-to-consumer] space are quite different depending on the partners, and we don’t see a ton of that,” he said. “There are pioneers [companies] like T-Mobile which offers a whole range of streaming services and offers to new customers from Netflix, Paramount Plus, Apple Plus, Google Storage.