As industry consolidation reshapes the streaming landscape, Peacock finds itself in an awkward position.
Since launching in 2020, the NBCUniversal-owned streaming service has grown to a total of 46 million paid subscribers, but has lost more than $10 billion. In its latest quarter, Peacock’s losses widened to $432 million, though Comcast executives say it will “approach” profitability in the second quarter.
While closing in on profitability is a meaningful inflection point, Peacock’s road to continued growth will only get more difficult as Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are poised to combine in a $110 billion merger, creating an HBO Max/Paramount+ behemoth with over 200 million subscribers that will put it closer to competitors like Netflix, Disney+/Hulu and Amazon’s Prime Video – and make Peacock’s subscriber gap more pronounced.
The combined streaming entity will also make the challenge of hanging on to customers more difficult, with experts telling TheWrap that Peacock will need to take bigger swings with its content strategy and find more ways to differentiate itself from the competition.
In the first three months of 2026, Peacock’s turnover rate remained at 9%, according to Antenna – the highest of any of the major streamers tracked by the research firm. An individual familiar with the matter, however, told TheWrap that Peacock’s churn is lower than Antenna’s figure and more in line with the industry average.
Meanwhile, a Hub Entertainment Research survey of 1,600 consumers found that 98% of respondents were aware of Peacock, but only 64% felt confident they could explain its offering and how it differentiates itself from other platforms to someone else, underscoring the challenges it faces in forging a base of loyal subscribers.
“It’s a tough place to be when consumers are already hitting subscription fatigue,” Qualia Legacy Advisors managing director Aaron Meyerson told TheWrap. “The merger won’t kill Peacock, but it probably caps it. Competing for high-profile IP gets harder when your chief rival just inherited WBD’s IP-heavy library overnight.”
Comcast executives have argued that they manage the media business holistically and that its strategy around Peacock is not to chase other streamers, but to “reimagine broadcast television” and “extend the NBC universe.”
During a SXSW panel in March, NBCUniversal direct-to-consumer president Matt Strauss said “the real battleground isn’t who has the most subscribers, it’s who earns the most share of time” and that NBCU would win that fight by super-serving fandoms.
That strategy notched a notable victory in the Nielsen Media Distributor Gauge in February, with NBCUniversal’s total share of TV viewership hitting 13%, driven by the Milan Cortina Olympics and the Super Bowl. Peacock hit a new platform best of 3% for the month, which was also driven in part by the original series “The Burbs,” while another 3% of the company’s total was attributable to its cable networks that were spun off into Versant in January.
While Meyerson said that reframing is “more defensible,” he noted it’s an “implicit acknowledgment of Peacock’s ceiling.”
And the fact remains that despite successes like “The ‘Burbs” and “The Office” spinoff “The Paper,” the streamer has thus far failed to produce a big scripted smash hit like its rivals, and its biggest IP to date is comedy series “Ted,” which just wrapped its second, likely final, season.
“Peacock doesn’t need to ‘win’ the streaming wars — it needs to be sustainably profitable within a bundled ecosystem,” he added. “Next quarter profitability is believable, but sustaining that profitability — keeping subs engaged without accelerating content spend — will be challenging.”
Evan Shapiro, a veteran TV producer and former head of NBCU’s Seeso streaming service, was less forgiving, arguing that Peacock breaking even or generating a small profit six years after launch is not meaningful enough to help offset the declines in Comcast’s broadband and pay TV businesses. He added that the service would be in a stronger competitive position had its leadership taken bolder swings years ago when the streaming wars were just starting to heat up.
“To me, the entire Peacock strategy right now seems to be Bravo, sports, and ‘Love Island,’” Shapiro told TheWrap. “The biggest problem with Peacock isn’t the platform. It’s an utter lack of vision.”
Peacock’s path forward
Peacock’s key point of differentiation among consumers surveyed by Hub was its sports offering, which the firm’s senior consultant Mark Loughney told TheWrap is a “tough thing to be known for when you’re not profitable yet,” especially as rights costs are expected to increase in the years ahead.
Comcast Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong assured Wall Street that the biggest costs from its $2.45 billion per year NBA contract has already hit its books this year and that executives “feel good about the direction from here.” But it also has another expensive package of sports rights coming up for renewal: The NFL.
Tom Rogers, a senior advisor at Versant and founder of CNBC, warned that the league’s renegotiations will push the major media companies to allocate an “enormous” amount of budget towards sports.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that limits and constrains entertainment expense to some extent,” Rogers told TheWrap. “That’s going to implicate Disney, that’s going to implicate Paramount, it’s going to implicate Comcast. They’re all going to be dealing with that issue.”
Despite sports programming being a double-edged sword, it has helped push more consumers towards Peacock’s entertainment offerings, with 54% of new subscribers from the Olympics and 56% of Super Bowl subscribers watching that content – on par or exceeding the 2022 Winter Olympics and Super Bowl.
Outside of sports, Bravo series have been a major win on Peacock, with their monthly reach growing by 45% over the last six months. Superfans watch 92% more non-Bravo hours than the normal subscriber and are 33% less likely to churn. Other titles that have resonated include “Love Island,” “The Traitors,” “All Her Fault” and event programming such as the “Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade” and “SNL50: The Anniversary Special.”
But experts argued that Peacock needs to invest more in diversifying its lineup of original content if it’s going to keep subscribers engaged and turn consistent profits in the long-term. A few bigger swings are coming up — Amy Poehler and “Parks and Rec” creator Mike Schur reunite for the comedy “Dig,” while “Crystal Lake” will turn the “Friday the 13th” franchise into a TV series (though it wasn’t without its production troubles).
One major bet Peacock is making on the scripted originals front is an over $1 billion TV and film deal with “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan, which kicks off in full after his contract with Paramount expires at the end of 2028.
“Taylor Sheridan is going to be very important. He’s a brand and a statement in himself that, ‘This is not liberal media. I can go watch this programming and it’s going to have a voice that speaks to me,’ which is half of America. That was a big misfire for Paramount to lose that and a huge purchase for Peacock,” a media executive who requested anonymity told TheWrap. “They just need to get out of their lane right now. They need more [than sports and Bravo].”
Beyond its investment in original programming, Peacock is expanding its distribution through individual bundles with Walmart+, Instacart and Apple TV, as well as Comcast’s Xfinity’s StreamSaver offering, which gives users the option to customize bundles with Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV and Netflix.
Additionally, Peacock’s ad-free Premium Plus tier is available as an add-on through Prime Video Channels and Roku and will roll out on YouTube’s Primetime Channels in the coming months. DirecTV and Charter both offer Peacock as well.
Playing with new formats like vertical video holds promise, with Peacock seeing longer user sessions on its mobile app and increased engagement with its content in early tests, according to a person familiar with its rollout plans. The company will launch a dedicated vertical video section and Your Bravoverse, a feed guided by an AI version of Andy Cohen, this summer. The Your Bravoverse feature will also expand to TVs at a later date.
Another lever available to Peacock is international expansion, which could allow it to not only pick up subscribers in new territories, but help flex its reach when bidding for sought-after film, TV and sports rights. But Comcast is in no rush, given its existing international presence with SkyShowtime and Hayu, not to mention the expenses, lower ARPU and different rules and taxes associated with such a move.
“I don’t see a reason in our construct why we are disadvantaged by not pursuing global,” Cavanagh said during an investor conference hosted by Morgan Stanley in March. “Others are doing it. Clearly, they have different strategies for different players. But in our case, domestic is our path.”
The M&A option
Peacock is already pulling a number of levers to differentiate itself, raising the question of whether it should look to M&A to help boost its scale.
Despite having a “high bar” when it comes to its appetite for dealmaking, Comcast was notably in the running to acquire WBD’s studio and streaming assets, but was ultimately outbid by Netflix and decided to bow out. Meanwhile, the media giant and its Sky division have also held talks with “Love Island” and “The Traitors” producer ITV about acquiring its media and entertainment business for £1.6 billion.
Shapiro said NBCUniversal and Peacock could potentially look to roll up a bunch of niche streamers or acquire AMC Global or Starz’s subscribers to bulk up their own customer base, but argued they’d “still be at a distant fifth or sixth place” after that.
Others have floated the possibility of Comcast parting with NBCUniversal. In January, Bank of America analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich said a spinoff of NBCU would give Comcast the strategic and regulatory rationale to pursue a merger with its broadband and pay TV rival Charter Communications to command a higher multiple as a pureplay connectivity company.
Meanwhile, the media executive said that Netflix could be a potential acquirer of NBCU if it was put up for sale.
“If Netflix was serious about Warner Brothers, it’ll get a pretty similar asset, frankly, at a much cheaper price [with NBCUniversal and Peacock],” the exec said. “But I don’t know if Netflix is going to have a bad taste in their mouth after what happened to their stock when they were pursuing Warner.”
Cavanagh has maintained that NBCU and Peacock are stronger staying within Comcast, but has said the company is open to exploring opportunities that create value.
“We always have the options to consider other things if and when we conclude that there’s a need to consider other paths. But driving results in the business is our priority for the near term,” he said during the Morgan Stanley conference. “If we conclude differently, hopefully, people take the evidence of the Versant spin and our consideration of a thoughtful approach to the Warner situation that made sense for us as evidence that we’re open for business when it comes to other broader possibilities. But we like what we’re doing.”
