NBCUniversal's Peacock streaming service is on track to turn profitable in the second quarter, media chairman Matt Strauss said. "Peacock will be profitable in Q2, which is a great milestone
NBCUniversal's Peacock streaming service is on track to turn profitable in the second quarter, media chairman Matt Strauss said.
"Peacock will be profitable in Q2, which is a great milestone for the company," Strauss said in an interview with TheStreet Roundtable publisher James Heckman at the Cannes Lions festival.
Peacock ended the first quarter of 2026 with 46 million paid subscribers, up from 41 million a year earlier, boosted by the Winter Olympics and NBA games, according to NBCUniversal's earnings. Streaming revenue nearly doubled to about $2 billion. The unit still posted a $432 million quarterly loss on higher programming costs tied to the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the NBA, and Comcast has guided that Peacock would "approach profitability" in the current quarter.
▶ Watch the full interview on Roundtable
Strauss said Peacock's economics are driven by engagement rather than subscriber count.
"We have in some cases half the number of subscribers as some other services, but we're actually generating close to the same amount of revenue," he said.
Roundtable CEO and co-founder James Heckman asked how NBCUniversal competes with the "new invasion of new trillion dollar companies" bidding for sports rights.
▶ Watch the full interview on Roundtable
"What's your core strategy against bidding against people doing extreme negative gross margin bids for a sport?" Heckman said.
Strauss compared the shift to the music industry's move from Napster to paid services such as Apple and Spotify.
"If you can create a better experience, quality experience, predictable, reliable, people will part money and pay for that," he said. "There's something inherent about experiences and premiumness that I think we should never lose sight of."
He pointed to the reality series Love Island USA, now in its eighth season, which releases new episodes six nights a week at 9 p.m. Eastern.
▶ Watch the full interview on Roundtable
"We know people tune in at nine o'clock, even though they could tune in at 10, they could tune in at 11, they could watch it the next day, because there's something about tapping into the collective zeitgeist where people want to be part of the social conversation," Strauss said.
"This notion of must-see TV, which was very core to NBC in the 90s, we are seeing that that can get recreated in this world of on demand, where people want to have appointment viewing."
NBCUniversal has also used technology to increase engagement. Strauss said Peacock streamed live vertical video of the Western Conference NBA Finals, using AI to track the ball and crop the feed in real time, and introduced a "performance mode" that overlays live statistics and shot probabilities on the broadcast.
"We're adding probabilities every time they're about to make a shot. We can add a probability of whether they're gonna make that shot based on the history of that player," he said.
The platform has about 100 million monthly active users. Strauss said NBCUniversal manages its brands as a single unit rather than separate businesses.
"We manage now as one portfolio: NBC, Bravo, Peacock, NBC Sports, NBC News," he said.
The comments come as Comcast prepares to spin off NBCUniversal's media and streaming assets, including Peacock, into a separate publicly traded company.
