NFL Wild Card Game Delivers Record 2.8M Peacock Sign-Ups
- by Wayne Friedman , January 25, 2024
Reversing some of the sentiment that the premium streaming marketplace is slowing in terms of new subscriber additions, new analysis shows the first exclusive streaming NFL playoff game on NBCUniversal’s Peacock ever took a record 2.8 million sign-ups over a three-day period, according to Antenna.
The research company, which covers the subscription economy, says no other singular programming event has resulted in as many sign-ups for a premium streamer in a three-day period.
“Time will tell how many of these subscribers Peacock retains,” say the report authors. “But Antenna data has shown that certain sports-motivated subscribers can be more loyal than the average subscriber.”
The AFC Wild Card game, in which the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Miami Dolphins, garnered nearly three million subscribers over a three-day period -- from January 12 through January 14.
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The research company notes that while the exclusive Peacock game bested the results in gaining more sign ups than other past Super Bowls on other streamers, the streaming airing for those games was available non-exclusively.
In addition, it says, the November 2019 launch of Disney+ saw more than 2.5 million sign-ups to the service in a single day.
The previous major sign-up period for Peacock was around the Thanksgiving holiday -- from November 23 through November 25, 2022 -- for a NFL Thanksgiving game and the FIFA World Cup under a Black Friday promotion which pulled in 1.5 million sign-ups.
For the exclusive AFC Wild Card game this year on Peacock, Nielsen said the game produced 22.86 million average viewers.
As the Antenna author states, unless we know how many of those 2.8m signups canceled in the week\month following the game, the book can't be closed on this thread.