What's New With Peacock: NBCUniversal's Peacock service closed out 2022 with its strongest quarter since its launch 2 years earlier, topping 20 million paid subscribers at last, with a big boost coming from the FIFA World Cup. In the first quarter of 2023, growth slowed, as it had across the industry. But revenue was the larger concern, slowing dramatically from around $154 million in Q4 2022 to just $25 million in Q1 of 2023. This was mostly due to a dip in the overall digital ad market, rather than problems facing Peacock specifically. Still, 2022 Was Huge for Peacock: Nonetheless, the Comcast-owned streaming service had a huge breakout year in 2022. Peacock brought in just $778 million total the previous year, and ended 2022 with over $2 billion in revenue. The service added around 7 million paid subscribers for the year, and hit its initial goal for monthly active users (MAA) with 30 million. Comcast President Michael Cavanaugh told investors back in April that "over 100 million people engage with our content every month." Still a Long Way to Go: Peacock nonetheless continues to trail considerably behind competitors like Netflix (with over 230 million subscribers), Disney+ (with 164.2 million subscribers), and Paramount+, which now has 46 million global subscribers and has started building a considerable lead. |
