Comcast to End Peacock Premium Free Promotion for Xfinity Customers

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorSorry, Comcast Xfinity customers: Your free access to the Peacock Premium streaming service is going to come to an end.Jeff Shell, CEO of NBCUniversal, said that making Peacock available to Comcast cable and broadband customers for no extra charge helped the fledgling streamer achieve traction after it launched in mid-2020, speaking Tuesday at the Credit Suisse 24th Annual Communications Conference.

However, “At some point we’ll roll that to paid,” Shell said.Currently, Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Flex customers are eligible to get Peacock Premium with ads for no additional cost; that’s normally priced at $4.99/month. (For $5/month, X1 and Flex users can get the no-ads Peacock Premium Plus package, normally $9.99.) The offers also extend to subscribers with Cox Communications’ Contour service.

A rep for NBCU’s Peacock did not have information on when the free Peacock Premium promo for cable customers would be ending.Click here to sign up for Variety’s free Strictly Business newsletter covering earnings, financial news, and more.As of the end of the first quarter of 2022, Peacock had 28 million monthly active accounts, including 13 million paid subscribers, Comcast reported.

That was a quarterly gain of 4 million paying Peacock Premium customers, but company execs cautioned that the Q1 growth was largely driven by Peacock’s livestreaming of the Super Bowl and the Beijing Winter Olympics during the quarter.“Getting Peacock to scale, that is critical,” Shell said. “We are spending a lot of time on that.”During the Credit Suisse session, Shell revealed that NBCU has largely completed its upfront selling cycle with volume flat, as declines due to “cord cutting were offset by [higher] pricing and.