Comcast/NBCUniversal’s Peacock has been available nationwide for nearly eight months but the streaming service is still MIA on Amazon Fire TV, one of the biggest connected TV platforms.
During a keynote address at a Morgan Stanley investor conference, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts hinted that Peacock may be close to plugging that hole in its distribution. He didn’t specifically mention Amazon but he did say his company hopes and believes that Peacock will be on all major platforms soon.
Peacock is currently available on Roku, Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Android TV, LG, Vizio, PlayStation, Xbox, iOS and Android devices along with Comcast’s X1 and Flex set-top boxes. According to The Desk’s Matthew Keys, Samsung is telling customers that Peacock will be available on its Tizen smart TV operating system later this month.
As of January, Peacock has attracted 33 million sign-ups. Comcast has yet to break out that figure in terms of monthly active users or paid subscribers, but Roberts claimed that Peacock was the second fastest growing brand in 2020 behind only Zoom.
In December, Amazon said that Fire TV had reached 50 million monthly active user
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As Comcast works on growing Peacock, the company still has its one-third ownership in Hulu to consider. Roberts today mentioned his company’s exit opportunity coming in a few years. In 2019, Comcast relinquished operational control of Hulu to Disney.
Under the terms of the deal, Comcast as early as 2024 can require Disney to buy its 33% stake in Hulu, and Disney can require Comcast to sell that stake at a fair market value. Disney is guaranteeing a minimum total equity value of Hulu at that time of $27.5 billion. Comcast also agreed to extend its NBCUniversal distribution agreement with Hulu’s on-demand and live TV services until late 2024. Comcast also said it will distribute Hulu on its Xfinity X1 pay TV platform.
Roberts said Comcast has an opportunity to not only get a lot of cash out of Hulu but also to redeploy the NBCU content from Hulu to Peacock on either an exclusive or non-exclusive basis.
As Peacock expands its advertising- and subscription-based streaming business, Comcast is also focused on Flex, its streaming video platform/hardware for its broadband-only subscribers. Roberts said as of that last week his company has deployed more than 3 million Flex boxes. He praised Flex for its video service aggregation capabilities and its ability to reduce churn by about 15% to 20% among customers who engage with the platform
“We’re at about 50% engagement with the people who have Flex so that’s an opportunity to increase that engagement and take advantage of the fact that they then think more highly of the company and churn less,” Roberts said.
He said that Comcast will be making more announcements this year about Flex and streaming aggregation.