Two months after its launch, Peacock will finally be on Roku.
After negotiations seemingly reached a head on Friday morning, with NBCUniversal threatening to pull all its channels off Roku, the two parties came to an agreement to keep those apps on Roku and add Peacock.
Here’s the statement from NBC announcing the deal.
“We are pleased Roku recognizes the value in making NBCUniversal’s incredible family of apps and programming, including Peacock, available to all of their users across the country. More than 15 million people signed up for Peacock since its national launch in July and we are thrilled millions more will now be able to access and enjoy Peacock along with other NBCUniversal apps on their favorite Roku devices. Roku’s incredible reach will not only help us ensure Peacock is available to our fans wherever they consume video but continue to expand NBCUniversal’s unrivaled digital presence across platforms.”
A tweet from Roku said that an announcement would be made “in the coming weeks,” and Peacock’s addition would come “soon,” neither of which are helpful for those wanting to stream Peacock content on their Roku device.
Hey streamers, @peacockTV will soon be landing on the Roku platform!
Stay tuned for an official announcement in the coming weeks.
— Roku (@Roku) September 18, 2020
The Streamable has a brief statement from Roku that essentially just confirms the deal.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with Comcast that will bring Peacock to Roku customers and maintains access to NBCU’s TV Everywhere apps.”
Roku did not have deals with either Peacock or HBO Max when each streaming service launched earlier this year. A deal for HBO Max still hasn’t happened, but Peacock is now done and dusted (though, predictably, the app isn’t live on Roku quite yet). Amazon also hasn’t closed deals with either service, and perhaps Peacock’s agreement with Roku can open the door to a deal with Amazon.
Peacock is slowly become a must-have service for those that enjoy NBC’s sports programming. Some live US Open coverage this week has been behind the Peacock paywall (including live action on both Saturday and Sunday), and there has been a startling amount of live Premier League matches on Peacock so far this season, including eight of the ten Matchweek 2 games this weekend (one of which is the tantalizing Chelsea-Liverpool clash). While this deal won’t suddenly make that content shift from Peacock to cable, it will make it accessible to all of those Roku users left in the dust over the last two months.
