More over 9 million of the 24.5 million monthly active Peacock accounts in the United States will be paid subscribers, according to a statement released by Comcast today. Peacock intends to raise its content budget to over $3 billion in 2022 alone to continue boosting that number.
In the past, the streamer has refused to reveal how many paid customers it has. This week’s stats, on the other hand, reveal a far more open approach. As of July 2021, Peacock announced that it had 20 million active monthly users. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said that the company also expects that the 7 million “highly engaged” Peacock members who receive Premium for free through Comcast’s own Xfinity service and other distributors will convert to paid subscribers over time, during the earnings call for Peacock parent Comcast on Thursday.
When compared to the likes of Disney+ and Netflix, Peacock is still a baby. With its significant change in content spending, Peacock joins the ranks of major streamers who are similarly investing billions in original programmes to increase their subscriber bases. Peacock
According to LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield, “the reality is we’re seeing a big global shift in consumers away from traditional TV bundles toward streaming.” This is the future, and every media organisation is looking at it.” Consumers want to watch material in this manner.”
A $5 ad-supported premium subscription gives you access to all of Peacock’s content; a $10 premium plus plan removes advertisements from the majority of the service’s programming; and a free and ad-supported plan limits the amount of content you can access. Eighty percent of customers prefer an ad-supported service over an expensive ad-free choice, according to Roberts.
As Roberts pointed out, “our paid subscribers have substantially lower churn and significantly more engagement,” and that “we see this in our customer mix” by their preference for the $5 paid AVOD tier over the $10 non-ad tier.
So, Roberts said, the business intends to reallocate resources and raise investments to build up its paid memberships, which provide customers with access to unique programmes. Roberts. More than doubling its budget from the previous year, Peacock expects to spend over $3 billion on domestic content in the coming year, with a goal of spending $5 billion “over the following couple of years.”
Rather than the 9 million paying customers, “the storey today out of Comcast was significantly more about the fact that they’re boosting their spend towards $5 billion over the next couple of years,” Greenfield adds. Everyone is aware that major investment is required to increase streaming. No matter where you go, you’ll need a tonne of material.
We can expect to see more of this as Comcast turns its resources to its streaming business, says Greenfield. The most important thing to remember is that the content you create is supreme. Peacock is well aware that it must either pay for the programming itself or stand aside while the rest of us dig into our wallets.###