Peacock has seen the full effect of its daring $110 million (£87m) NFL Playoff gamble. NBC's choice to spend $110 million on exclusive rights for a post-season clash in 2023 has paid off, as most customers kept their subscriptions for the Peacock service.
In January, it was controversial when the broadcaster announced they would exclusively show the Wild Card playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins on their streaming platform. But it seems viewers decided to pay up and register for a subscription to watch the match.
Around 23 million viewers watched the playoff spectacle, according to Nielsen - an amazing number considering Peacock reportedly has about 30 million subscribers. New numbers from BarrettSportsMedia.com suggest that Peacock gained three million new subscribers just for the game.
Their study found that these new subscribers signed up in the three days leading up to the Wild Card game. The move was popular and led to lots of sign-ups. Their research also found that about 71 percent of these customers kept their subscription seven weeks after the game.
In the end, viewers were treated to a memorable clash on the night at Arrowhead Stadium as the Chiefs triumphed 26- 7 in sub-zero temperatures. The evening also proved controversial as it emerged that some fans were left with frostbite after they braved the arctic conditions to cheer on their team.
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It appears that the success of the game from a broadcasting point of view has inspired other streaming giants to sit up and take notice, however. In fact, following on from NBC's major outlay for the Wild Card clash, Amazon have forked out some $120 million for an exclusive post-season game for 2024.
Either way, it appears that the reaction to the experiment has left key figures convinced that this kind of set-up could become more commonplace moving forward. Waxing lyrical about the work done by Peacock on the game, Hans Schroeder, the executive VP and COO of NFL Media, admitted: "We were thrilled.
"It's pretty remarkable that the first time we put a wild card game on Peacock it beats the same time slot, same broadcast partner the year before, he explained to the The Hollywood Reporter.
"That's awesome, and I mean its a testament to how fans are changing and watching. It's a testament to what Comcast did to really build awareness there.
Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs won the game en route to the Super Bowl (Getty)"We still believe broadcast is the biggest and widest platform. And so these are perfect opportunities to still leverage that and have the widest reach that we can, but use that in a way to build some of the newer platforms, in this case Peacock," Schroeder says, adding that the league will look for similar opportunities in coming years.
Schroeder added: "The good thing about the rapid sort of rate of change in the media landscape overall is it's creating more choice and more opportunities, and we're going to continue to be selective. We like to really make sure we've done our work upfront so that any new thing we're going to do ,we give ourselves the best possible chance of success."
"And I think that's what we'll continue to do and push our partners to figure out where they see opportunities, and on this end continue to explore the ones that we see as well, in a way that hopefully is all additive."
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