Comcast Corp. CMCSA -6.82% said the number of paying subscribers to its Peacock streaming service jumped by more than 40% in the first quarter, thanks in part to a jam-packed February of top sporting events, which included the Super Bowl and Beijing Winter Olympics.
The performance of Peacock, which has been slow to gain traction since its launch less than two years ago, comes as the streaming industry’s leader, Netflix Inc., NFLX -1.01% last week said it had lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade. Netflix’s decline highlighted the challenges that newer entrants in the streaming field are likely to face growing their customer base while competing with a much larger field of rivals.
Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts on Thursday said Peacock had more than 13 million paying customers and 28 million monthly active accounts as of March 31. In the fourth quarter, Comcast had said over nine million people were paying to watch Peacock, which is also available free of charge to existing cable and broadband customers of Comcast and other providers, like Cox Communications Inc.
Mr. Roberts attributed the rise in customers to the Beijing Olympics and Super Bowl as well as new content on Peacock, including “Bel-Air,” which he called the most successful original series on the service.
“Given the natural ebbs and flows of our content slate, we don’t anticipate seeing this type of growth every quarter,” Mr. Roberts said on a call with investors.
Philadelphia-based Comcast, owner of Xfinity-branded broadband and cable services, the NBCUniversal media empire and the U.K.’s Sky TV business, on Thursday reported a 6.6% rise in net profit to $3.55 billion, or 78 cents a share, compared with $3.33 billion, or 71 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 14% to $31 billion.
Comcast’s broadband unit, the cornerstone of its business, added 262,000 new customers, down 43% from the same period last year. The slowdown in broadband growth follows a period of robust quarters in the early months of the pandemic, when many customers were relying solely on their at-home networks.
The company’s cellphone business added 318,000 new customers, a quarterly record, bringing Xfinity Mobile’s total lines to nearly 4.3 million. The cable-TV business, still burdened by cord-cutting in favor of streaming services, lost 512,000 customers.
Comcast owns Xfinity-branded broadband and cable services.
Photo: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg News
The company’s NBCUniversal unit, which is made up of its television, streaming, film and theme-park businesses, posted a 47% increase in revenue to $10.3 billion. NBCU benefited from the Super Bowl and Beijing Winter Olympics, which were available on platforms including NBC and on the company’s Peacock streaming service. These two events alone accounted for about $1.5 billion of the $6.87 billion in revenue generated by NBCU’s media segment, the company said.
Comcast said more than 200 million people watched either the Super Bowl or Olympics on NBC, Peacock and other platforms. The Super Bowl drew about 112 million viewers to NBCUniversal’s platforms, while the Beijing Olympics drew the lowest Olympics ratings ever for NBC.
NBCU’s studios division recorded a 15% revenue increase to $2.76 billion, while revenue for the theme parks unit more than doubled to $1.56 billion. Both businesses were heavily affected in the early days of the pandemic and are still rebounding.
Revenue for the U.K.-based Sky TV business fell 4.5% to $4.76 billion.
Write to Lillian Rizzo at [email protected]
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