NBC Universal and Peacock:
How To Piss Off Millions of Existing Fans and Customers, Part 1 of 2
aka What Not To Do CFL
Note the lessons and implications here for ANY sport or league that is going to try to tie itself EXCLUSIVELY to a streaming platform.
For the sports leagues that want to be big leagues, just say no already to that strategy. Why ignore where the money with the big leagues is flowing let alone their methods?
The first shot was fired by NBC Universal (NBCU) in September 2020, in the midst of a pandemic at that, when for no reason than some exercise in sheer Manhattan corporate greed, NBC decided that it might be good idea to put all Premier League games on Peacock that weekend. This was as it was known to likely only NBC executives that NBCSN was going to be jettisoned given that NBC was going to lose the NHL contract and with good reason and riddance given what the NBC had done to ruin their coverage of the NHL.
For Premier League, please note this moment in peak season for live sports in mid-September was just over 6 years after tens of millions to establish a cherished Saturday morning band and loyal audience.
The backlash by fans, who were already paying for cable subscriptions, was fierce and many like me have not ceased to remind NBC of such greedy antics. Some of us also reminded them of the same when we canceled Comcast service. Some of us also remind them on their Facebook pages and social media with ample concurrence.
Only recently has NBCU relented and put at least one PL game in each time slot on broadcast and/or cable TV given that the World Cup games are going to be on Telemundo, so they did figure out not to lose their audience in the run-up but to groom that audience that of course they once did not need to lose let alone their heartless decision in the midst of a pandemic in September 2020.
So how bad is it at Peacock now after the end of the third quarter after subscribers remained flat in 2Q2022 as all other major streaming services are increasing subscribers?
You do reap what you sow no matter how mighty you might be in life. There will be no remorse until this nonsense of putting prime content on only streaming by NBCU, instead of perhaps a simulcast as does CBS via Paramount+, ceases.
Note that CNBC is a unit of NBC Universal, so they are having the scripted report of the numbers for them via their own perennial hack David Faber with their NBC spin as well. They are shameless!
And they did succeed to juice the numbers by also introducing a $1.99 per month discount rate for the service, so give them credit for that in the current streaming price war now that everything is open and there are not so many real or fake captives at home so much.
Peacock parent Comcast typically uses its quarterly earnings reports to issue performance updates on the NBCUniversal-run subscription platform, whether the numbers are good (like last winter’s big 4 million subscribers spike) or awful (July’s big fat zero). That’s why it was a bit of a Peacocktober surprise when NBCU CEO Jeff Shell decided to go on one of his own cable channels Tuesday to let the world know Peacock’s paid subscriber base was once again growing, telling CNBC’s David Faber the streamer now boasted “over 15 million” paid users, 2 million more than the 13 million it claimed at the end of June. “Up” is undoubtedly good, but the bigger question facing Peacock is whether these latest gains are good enough. I don’t think they are.
For one thing, the streamer got those 2 million subscribers only after implementing what felt like an everything-but-the-kitchen sink strategy to boost its numbers following the disastrous second-quarter stall. Consider all the actions Shell’s underlings at NBCU and Peacock took over the last few months to goose the numbers, as well as some of the other factors that helped drive sign-ups.
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The problem is, despite arguably doing so much right over the summer to turbocharge subscribers, Peacock still only added 2 million more paid users. That’s half as many as it gained during the first three months of 2022, when the combination of the Olympics and the Super Bowl temporarily inflated Peacock’s subscriber base by 4 million subscribers. In other words, while Peacock once again proved it’s able to boost its paid numbers by pulling out a bunch of stops — as it did last winter — these stunts are yielding diminished returns.
Paolo's Prophecy For Early February 2023:
And then the people ...canceled again - right?
Too bad we won't know much beyond the usual excuses until perhaps May after the 1Q2023 numbers are out and well after the NFL has been over.
But what stops will NBC Universal try to pull out this time?
Most of the viewing interest on NBCU, with plenty of other options elsewhere for non-sports fans, in November through January is in the FIFA World Cup and the NFL Sunday Night Football along with a few playoff games, all of which are on live broadcast TV not Peacock. You also don't need Peacock to see highlights elsewhere.
As noted previously, there is a longer game strategy ahead at NBCU for 1Q2024 for either an acquisition of Hulu or a rebrand. They are just stalling now perhaps via these aggressive antics. Or they could have simply treated their core PL audience well before right?
Then there's this take by a non-employee of any unit of NBCU unlike David Faber of CNBC. Unlike for mortgage notes they hold that are not in default, bankers valuing the assets of others will seldom inflate those values. Ouch.
> What’s more, streaming industry analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed argues it’s almost “irrelevant” at this point whether Peacock added two million or four million new subscribers last quarter because the streamer actually has a bigger headache: Audience engagement — or lack thereof. “What matters is daily time spent watching per Peacock subscriber,” he says. “From what I’ve seen, it’s very little. It makes it hard to drive ad dollars and/or raise the price if you don’t have engagement. The problem is, nobody just turns on Peacock to watch it.” Indeed, in his interview with Shell, CNBC’s Faber quoted from a Bank of America investor note which warned that because of the “small amount of net [subscriber] ads and lack of buzz around hit shows we worry that Peacock may struggle to hit engagement figures of 10 hours a month.” Shell acknowledged the importance of engagement — and then responded by changing the subject to revenue.
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