It’s my belief that the Olympics and the two Hail Marys via the NFL are the ONLY reasons that Peacock continues to exist and is being pushed, as well as was as noted in this thread a year ago in 2023 with the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics, that reality was the first tell a year ago that Comcast would not augment its stake in Hulu in their deal with Disney instead of selling their stake in Hulu to Disney as agreed.
I am thinking Comcast continues to play things up for Peacock for 2025 after more fluffing of the the business via the NFL game in September, much like in January via that playoff game though still now with Peacock losing hundreds of millions per quarter.
Now the Comcast strategy, as noted above, seems to be a price increase for standalone service for Peacock and bundling the Peacock service with two other streaming services in a low-price volume rollout of internet service without a subscription, as in “let’s make it up via affluent niche audiences with money (i.e. the lucrative advertising demographic [dominantly suburban women] during gymnastics!) or in volume.”
I see the volume part of this current move as Comcast’s strategy to try to knock down competitors like Verizon and T-Mobile so as to recapture heavily lost market share via their belated WiFi internet strategy in 2022, which had failed since they had continued to push the trash cable content and crappy Peacock with their internet service.
Let’s note that Comcast only adopted that strategy in 2022 after Peacock failed miserably after launch in 2020 due to being marketed as an add-on to the cable bundle along with coercion to try to get people to sign up after moving content off cable channels as they hiked cable rates - all during a pandemic too!
There was already far less real sports content on NBC Sports Network before Peacock and its shutdown after 2021 after NBC began to mail it in on NHL coverage in late 2019 once they found out they lost the rights to renewal.
For cable subscribers, Comcast badly misused its sports channel already in the bundle. Now they use USA for Premier League for a few games a week as they try to shuffle more onto Peacock, but I think Comcast wishes they had chosen differently given how CBS is airing sports content.
Now only after three years of such failure and pissing off millions including especially loyal customers for years, Comcast is pushing the internet with a streaming bundle instead of merely Peacock, for on its own without the Olympics or the NFL, PEACOCK IS A LOSER!
Anyway, some other developments are looming via the core competitors of Comcast in the US with regards to content bundles included with services.
Personally, I’m only interested in FREE via any given streaming service but for Paramount+, for it’s not as if I am not actually paying for it already via the mobile service in some way.
Later this year I’m shuffling my mobile plan, so we shall see what opportunities are at hand.
Compared to October 2021 in my last full month of cable TV and internet service with Comcast, after initial savings by November 2021, it’s great to have reduced combined monthly amount for internet, TV, and phones $55 per month now, and that includes after payment for a year of Paramount+, and on the decline more later this year.