January 15, 2024

‘PEACOCK GAME:’ THE NFL’S DIGITAL BUTTFUMBLE. The Kansas City-Miami playoff contest is barricaded behind a paywall, leading to fan irritation. But are streaming platforms the way of the future?

On The Peacock Game, I hate to say it but: expect more. Television, you may have read, is in decline, at least the old way of watching: the cable “bundle” is dwindling, replaced by streamers like Amazon, Max, Peacock, Netflix etc. These companies need to grow, and it makes sense that they’d explore weaponizing the one thing on television everyone still watches: the NFL.

That’s what Peacock wants to know: if you love it enough to pay them for it. The streamer announced Sunday that 23 million people watched the game, a figure Peacock said includes those local audiences in K.C. and Miami. Peacock also claimed the game drove internet usage to “a single day U.S. record,” a major claim, if it includes the afternoon two llamas escaped in Arizona and BuzzFeed asked everyone: What color is this dress?

This is our new reality. You’re already paying Amazon if you’re been watching Thursday Night Football, Sunday Ticket is off to YouTube,and as cable continues to bleed subscribers, more streaming games are sure to follow. The NFL’s desire for every eyeball is pushing up against the new realities of modern media, and if it wants the dollars (Peacock paid $110 million for its playoff game, the Journal’s Joe Flint reported) it has to let its TV partners reorient their business.

(Allow me to disclose the obvious: I’m behind a paywall! I’m fine with it. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll be standing at an intersection with my column scribbled on a sandwich board.)

For football fans shut out of Chiefs-Dolphins, this is cold comfort. I will assure that you didn’t miss a classic. You didn’t miss emotion like Sunday’s Lions win in Detroit, or despair like Jerry Jones in his skybox. You missed Mahomes playing well, you missed Kansas City looking again like a contender, and you did miss a little bit of happy Taylor Swift. And you missed Andy Reid mustache icicles.

Worth paying for? You’ll have to decide.

And a lot of people did: The Chiefs-Dolphins game on Peacock was the most-streamed live event in US history.

Peacock scored a touchdown Saturday for its first NFL playoff game exclusively shown on the NBCUniversal-owned streamer, registering record ratings and internet usage for the matchup in the freezing cold between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins.

The “Peacock Exclusive Wild Card” game garnered 23 million total viewers, according to Nielsen. NBC said in a release that the game sets records for the “most-streamed live event in US history” and was also responsible for the most internet usage ever in the US on a single date, consuming 30% of internet traffic during the Saturday night game.

That number also includes viewership figures from the local NBC affiliates in Miami and Kansas City and on the NFL+ mobile app, where the game was also shown outside of Peacock.

Notably, the ratings for the exclusively streamed game was up 6% over last year’s primetime AFC Wild Card Game that was shown on NBC’s broadcast network.

Overall, Saturday was a good day for Peacock, which lost $2.8 billion last year for its parent company Comcast but is growing in paid subscribers. The streamer had its ”largest single day ever in audience usage, engagement and time spent, with a record 16.3 million concurrent devices,” NBC said, but it didn’t reveal how many new subscribers were added.

At least for the moment, live look inside the Peacock boardroom:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll