According to the earnings, Peacock now has 24.5 million monthly active users. Comcast went on to say that “within these 24.5M MAA’s are over 9 million paid subscribers.” That means a little more than a third of those that subscribe to Peacock are actually paying for the service. That’s good news for Comcast, even though it does give Peacock for free to its customers as well as Cox customers. About 7 million are from Xfinity and other top distributors, who get Peacock Premium for no extra cost. Remember, Peacock does have a free plan available, but most will subscribe to Peacock Premium, as not all content is available on the free plan. However, at 24.5 million active users, that is still far fewer than what Netflix, HBO MAX, Hulu, and the other streaming services have. Peacock is also much cheaper, with a free plan available. And paid plans starting at $4.99 per month.
Peacock has an interesting business model, for streaming services
Comcast is going a different route than other streaming services. It currently offers three tiers on Peacock. There’s Peacock, which is free but doesn’t have some of its biggest titles – like Friends. Then there’s Peacock Premium, which has all of its content and it costs $4.99 per month. Finally, there’s Peacock Premium Plus for $9.99 per month which is ad-free. So essentially, users could sign up for free, Comcast would still make money off of them from their ad views too. This was likely done as a way to gain more subscribers. But even with Peacock Premium at $5/month, that is a really good deal for streaming. And the cheapest in the industry – aside from discovery+. Peacock also has a ton of sports, with the Winter Olympics coming up, and with WWE’s live premium events also on Peacock.
