Comcast expects NBA will be ‘launch pad’ for Peacock

Comcast has made clear, it is all-in on live sports rights.

The Peacock parent company has made sports a core part of the streamer’s strategy and, during a Thursday morning earnings call, emphasized the importance of this type of programming to its future. This fall, Comcast will begin the first year of an 11-year agreement with the NBA that includes an exclusive package of games for Peacock. Company executives insist that the league will be “a launch pad” for the streaming service, which has struggled to reach profitability since launch.

According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, Peacock lost $215 million in Q1, though that’s a significant improvement compared to the $639 million the streamer lost in Q1 last year. Overall, Peacock’s revenue rose 16% to $1.2 billion, and it added over five million new subscribers year-over-year on the back of its new deal with Charter Communications.

During the call, Comcast president Mike Cavanagh did not commit to a timeline for Peacock’s profitability, but said, “I do expect Peacock to be on a continuing trend of driving towards improved monetization, bigger scale and therefore declining losses over time.”

Part of that scale will be driven by the NBA.

“We continue to think that acquiring the rights to bring the NBA back to NBC and Peacock is a big deal, big moment, big accomplishment,” Cavanagh said. “The team is working very hard to make sure, not just within sports, but across entertainment as well, with the new audience that we’ll bring in to over the years ahead — and we have [the NBA] for 11 years — make sure that we use NBA as a launch pad to further scale Peacock and further monetize it.”

For Comcast, Peacock will soon become the platform for the company’s live sports properties as it prepares to spin off most of its linear cable channels. Once that move is made, any live sports inventory owned by Comcast that doesn’t end up on its NBC broadcast network will be destined for Peacock. And given that inventory includes 11 years of the NBA and Olympics rights through 2036, Peacock will be a must-have for sports fans for years to come.