Will you be watching the NFL playoff game on Peacock?
- Thread starter Oil Can Dan
- Start date
I said it earlier in the thread and I'll say it again and keep it on topic so a mod doesn't die of an aneurism because people are having fun, but Peacock is a great service. They have a TON of shows and movies. And it's a wide range.
So if you like Hallmark movies around Christmas, they are there. Scores of christmas movies. And not just Hallmark, everything holiday. If you like reality shows, you can tuck into The Traitors and have a blast. (the first season is available in full, 2nd season ongoing right now) I am not a Bravo watcher but I know people are and all the Bravo shows are on Peacock.
Poker Face was great. The Resort was a hilarious romp, as was Based On a True Story. Mrs. Davis was nuts but awesome. Girls5Eva is excellent, especially if you liked 30 Rock. Nobody has watched the Capture, but it's a great British show in the style of Line of Duty or Endeavor. And, of course, you get the entire NBC show lineup every year.
Or if you're looking for a wonderful, contemplative movie about education, youth, and growth, you can watch The Holdovers. Or just review the library and find 20 other flicks you would want to watch.
And that's all maybe 0.45% of what Peacock has. Peacock is not a death sentence as a service, it's excellent.
I changed my vote, as I thought I had Peacock for free and it turns out I don't anymore. No way am I signing up for a service to watch one game. Fuck off.
That said, when that NEP documentary series drops on Apple +, I'll be jumping on that and probably knocking out Ted Lasso while I'm at it.
That said, when that NEP documentary series drops on Apple +, I'll be jumping on that and probably knocking out Ted Lasso while I'm at it.
Browns-Texans 29M
Cowboys-Packers 40M
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2024/01/packers-cowboys-ratings-fox-wild-card-viewership/
I'm guessing, given the match up, they could have had close to another 10M in viewership on network TV. Saturday's game did worse than Browns-Texans Sunday afternoon and barely better than Jax- Chargers last year.
Absolutely could have delivered another 10M on NBC.
Of course the economic calculus is different for having the game on Peacock. While NBCU would have made more money Saturday night from selling those extra 10M ad impressions, they may net out to a bigger return if Peacock added, say, 5 million subscribers. And half or more of them stay subscribed for 3-6 months.
The game would of done close to a 40 if they kept it on the networks imo, kind of hard to classify this as a success but I'm sure the NFL and Peacock made out financially from it. I dont only think this crap is here to stay but i think the NFL will eventually be completely paywalled. It's something imo they are clearly wanting to transition towards...
The NFL is currently not paywalled, except for the Amazon Thursday game plus one playoff game.
The NFL won't be paywalled anytime soon, if ever. The NFL and the networks don't want to limit the maximum number of eyeballs. Going full paywall will crush the overall numbers. Nobody financial involved wants that to happen.
Nitpick: one of the London games was an ESPN+ exclusive.
Totally agree that the NFL very much understands the value of being on broadcast television. To the point where they've worked hard to make sure each broadcaster (FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC) has a piece of the inventory.
Peacock had a Saturday regular season game and NFLN had one too as well as the European games.
But again, those games as well as the playoff game are all available free OTA in the local markets.
NFL is the lone survivor of watching your team in market for free.
This is the thing.
I live in NYC. If I want to watch a Knicks game, I can't even do it via YoutubeTV. It has to be Spectrum. If I want to watch the Celtics, League Pass is the only option. The same goes for the NHL.
For the Red Sox, it's MLB.TV. But even if you live in Boston, you need NESN via cable. Or Fubo, I think.(until Fubo goes out of business)
For the NFL, all home games are broadcast on local networks. And then one game goes on Peacock and people flip. I guess that shows the power of the NFL because very few people can watch NHL games and less people care.
Is Fubo rumored to be going under? (I sure hope not, as they were our best streaming option to cover a broad range of channels.)
As a public company, they are teetering on the brink. But it should continue for the time being and might even be an attractive takeover candidate. But they are still very far away from making money and the money is running out. The stock was above 50 three years ago, and it's at 2.58 now. So they don't have a lot of access to liquidity, either.
But bankruptcy wouldn't end the service, at least not in the short term. At least a couple of years left of service at a minimum, would be my guess. It's really tough right now for these small companies that don't have a lot of cash and are still years away from making money and running massive losses.
Plus their competitors are Comcast and Google. Deep pockets versus no pockets.
They also just announced another price increase(which I assume is being driven by how cash starved they are). Putting them significantly over YTTV. I really don't like their service for a variety of reasons, but I've stayed because of NESN. They are getting close the point where going back to YTTV, and grabbing NESN 360 is almost a wash, cost wise. Thinking seriously about dropping them.
People love Fubo. But not enough people. And Fubo can't keep operating at a huge loss. YouTubeTV can operate at a loss for decades and it's a rounding error because of their search profits. TheTube TV is just to keep people in the Google ecosystem.
I personally love YouTubeTV and have never tried Fubo. All the services are raising the fees quite a bit. When YoutubeTV was like 40 dollars a month, it was an insane deal. It's still pretty great at 80 bucks. But if Cable bundles were charging 120ish, there was no way 40 dollars would last.
This is why services like Peacock and Paramount Plus won't be going anywhere. There is money there to survive. Until they get bought.
I wonder what the impact on the economy of un-used monthly service charges and lost or disregarded credit cards is. I bet it's multi-billions.
As a complete aside, I've been charged with trying to get my elderly father's monthly expenses in check. He has over a dozen monthly charges that were likely free trials or whatever, and they have been charging him for years. The hoops you have to go through to cancel is extraordinary -- especially when dealing with someone who is not exactly good at keeping passwords. I've had to send letters to statutory agents threatening litigation just to get out of stuff.
Which is to say that I'm sure every new sign up for a trial or monthly fee has the potential of being a future cash stream solely due to to cancellation hassle. I guess gym memberships work on the same principle. I would think each new sign up is gold, because people forget or can't be bothered and so a few million fewer eyeballs is not a huge deal.
As a complete aside, I've been charged with trying to get my elderly father's monthly expenses in check. He has over a dozen monthly charges that were likely free trials or whatever, and they have been charging him for years. The hoops you have to go through to cancel is extraordinary -- especially when dealing with someone who is not exactly good at keeping passwords. I've had to send letters to statutory agents threatening litigation just to get out of stuff.
Which is to say that I'm sure every new sign up for a trial or monthly fee has the potential of being a future cash stream solely due to to cancellation hassle. I guess gym memberships work on the same principle. I would think each new sign up is gold, because people forget or can't be bothered and so a few million fewer eyeballs is not a huge deal.
Last year’s late games in wildcard round did 27M (BAL/CIN) and 20.6 (LAC/JAX) so getting 23M streaming seems like good results from their streaming exclusive experiment
peacock had reportedly 30M subscribers at the end of 2023 so presumably they picked up some more along the way who will stick with it.
peacock had reportedly 30M subscribers at the end of 2023 so presumably they picked up some more along the way who will stick with it.
It’s what a lot of those advocacy and non-profit groups that do canvassing and phone banking rely on (cancellation hassle or people who forget they are paying $10 a month to save the whales or whatever their cause is).
one of my first jobs out of college was managing one of those operations and while we didn’t explicitly ask “did you forget you were signed up?” we were asked to note down the number of times recurring members mentioned they had forgotten they were actively paying and then that information was passed upstream
Nowadays there’s a whole new industry of companies who offer “subscription shut off” services and those types of “benefits” are being added to all the money managing apps out there- for a fee of course.
Canceling cable requires an affidavit notarized and written in blood. I will never forget how difficult it was to cancel Optimum when I was selling my house. I was selling, it was over, I wasn't moving anywhere.(it was a 2nd home) I had to cancel because someone else was moving in.
And it took 4 separate conversations with the phone line to finally reach the person who could get it done. It was over an hour. And it was a frustrating hour. And when I finally got to the right person who could help me cancel, they were so fucking pissed I was canceling, like I was stealing this guy's first born. It was all curt commentary and attitude. I'm like, "I loved the service, I've been a customer for eight years, never a problem, but I am freakin moving out and I have no choice. Cancel this shit."
Note, I recently moved out of a different house last April. That was Spectrum. And to their credit, the canceling process was much faster and easier. 15 minutes top, no pissy attitude, they understood I was moving and had no choice. Even returning the boxes at FedEx was easy AF. 8 cable boxes and a modem processed and returned in under 5 minutes.
If you want to cancel Youtube TV or an Amazon Channel, it is a few clicks. I bet canceling Netflix or Apple TV is just as easy.
Back in the day, canceling AOL was literally impossible. Even if you called, they would be like, "Yeah yeah, you're canceled, all good," and people would still get charged. That one was so shady, of course, that there was a huge class action and payout by AOL for pulling this.
Some gyms also require an affidavit written in blood to get out of. Some of the smaller gyms will pull the AOL move.
Canceling Apple TV is a pita if you used a fake DOB because you didn’t want to give the AI machine too much info and forgot your pw.
Agree 100% on the economics of it all. As a service, I think FUBO kind of sucks. Shitty channel guide, little on demand library, and I've had way more buffering/streaming issues with them than I ever had with YTTV. Won't miss them if I do make the switch back.
I cancelled Comcast a couple of years ago, and it could not have been easier. I drove the set-top box to the Comcast store and handed it in. They made no attempt to try to keep the long-standing account.
This blows my mind. I have no issues with streaming Fubo and all kinds of issues with Prime. I also like the channel guide. Its just like what I'm used to from cable basically.
The biggest deal for me was that I tried the two Sling options and I couldn't get the network channels that I needed for NFL games. With Fubo and Prime I get almost all the games I got when I had cable.
The only thing that's keeping me from doing this is how awful the NESN 360 app is.
If the app improves, I will but I don't see it. Continues to blow my mind how crappy NESN is with all things production.
I was comparing FUBO to YouTubeTV, not prime. I've also had buffering issues with prime.
Just because lots of people accept a monthly cable or streaming package bill as a necessary cost for watching TV, it doesn’t change the fact that ESPN MNF games are essentially paywalled. (And, given that around $10 of your monthly cable bill goes to ESPN, it’s actually more expensive than Peacock.)
I think it's clear ESPN is a paywall. But ESPN MNF has also been on ABC all season. Which is not.
The NFL knows where the money is.
Only because ABC ran out of content during the strikes. I assume it will be back to ESPN exclusively next year.
This seems right. MNF on ABC is bad for Disney's bottom line. They need the ESPN exclusivity to keep the carriage fees high. I imagine only a handful of games will be on ABC next year.
ESPN is a paywall but so is TNT for the NBA and TBS/Fox Sports/ESPN for MLB and ESPN has had a night football game since the 90s, tho.(used to be Sunday nights)
People complained about that, too, back then. Turns out, people kept watching.
Renting on a dwindling medium as the primary means for people to consume your sport seems like a bad customer acquisition strategy. The NFL is fine because limited inventory. I don’t feel the same for the other sports.
Not surprising at all. This isn't going away for those actually wondering. Although that's a higher number than I would have thought.
71% of Signups for Peacock’s Exclusive NFL Playoff Game Have Stuck Around
https://www.indiewire.com/news/analysis/peacock-exclusive-nfl-playoff-game-subscriber-growth-1234966152/
71% of Signups for Peacock’s Exclusive NFL Playoff Game Have Stuck Around
https://www.indiewire.com/news/analysis/peacock-exclusive-nfl-playoff-game-subscriber-growth-1234966152/
I was one who signed up for the game and cancelled immediately. I took advantage of the paid for month to also watch the movie "The Holdovers". Peacock then made a smart marketing move bringing Oppenheimer to their line up but setting a premiere date some days after the initial month following the NFL playoff game. I assume many people probably stuck around for at least an extra month for that. The retention numbers referenced in the indiewire article were for subscribers who were still with Peacock at the end of February. It will be interesting to see what percentage remain at the end of March without the draw of NFL / Oppenheimer.
Personally, after I cancelled, Peacock started emailing discount offers to return. I decided to sign up again when they recently offered 6 months @ $1.99/month. That will get me through the summer olympics which will likely be another bump for their subscriber base.
The base plan is only $6 a month, so it’s easy to miss (and also the reason they’re losing money hand over fist).
What was the trick? Peacock is a great service and people are talking like they had to give a kidney to watch an NFL game.
My guess is many of those people have not opened Peacock again. Could be wrong. It was a transparent way to get subscribers. I’m sure there are many that are happy. I’m also assuming there are many more who don’t know they’re still paying. It is not onerous but it’s transparent what Peacock was/is doing. They got people to sign up for a recurring sub knowing customer acquisition is difficult and people suck at cancelling the dozens of monthly subs they pay for. It’s a good short-term strategy but having people be pissed off their forced to sign up for you generally isn’t a great long-term strategy.
Man, you're really giving the "people" involved in this situation absolutely no agency whatsoever. They just sign up and pay the bill but never use Peacock and forgot they signed up in the first place?
Seems like a dubious belief considering if people signed up to watch the game, the lead time was days or hours. Who would forget to cancel if their plan was to cancel? Is it possible that people signed up, went through the Cock's library and wanted to keep the service?
Nah. Seems like the more realistic way to look at this is that people are idiots with minutes of short term memory and NBC is running a ponzi scheme.
Yes I believe that happened. Again, not all but if I were to guess it was most. People have plenty of agency but people are also dumb and forgetful. I’m usually on top of cancelling things but it often requires multiple reminders. I also consider myself more on top of these matters than most so, yes, I fully believe a lot of people forget they’re paying for Peacock. Could be wrong, could be right.
And many people forget they sign up for subscriptions. There are several companies that focus on helping people save money by cancelling unknown or duplicate subscriptions. Rocket is particularly prevalent on Instagram, at least for me.
Not sure how any of this is a Ponzi scheme or remotely close. Based on your history I assume you know what a Ponzi scheme is so that’s a weird response. I’m just pointing out what I think is shitty business strategy. Didn’t think you’d take it so poorly.
And many people forget they sign up for subscriptions. There are several companies that focus on helping people save money by cancelling unknown or duplicate subscriptions. Rocket is particularly prevalent on Instagram, at least for me.
Not sure how any of this is a Ponzi scheme or remotely close. Based on your history I assume you know what a Ponzi scheme is so that’s a weird response. I’m just pointing out what I think is shitty business strategy. Didn’t think you’d take it so poorly.
Thing is, viewing data suggests that you’re incorrect. Peacock has had a number of their new original shows perform particularly well since the Wild Card game. It’s likely that a substantial number of their new subscribers have watched non-NFL programming since the playoff game.
There is a ton of data that shows how people have become very savvy about how they churn through DTC services. This ain’t 2018 anymore, most people are hip to the game. The vast majority of people who were savvy enough to sign up for Peacock and watch a playoff game are also smart enough to cancel the service should they not want it anymore.
Cool, I’m wrong then. Appreciate the context. Figure you know much better than most of us so thanks for setting my assumption driven analysis straight.
That said, a cable company with a streaming service is dumb and diametrically opposite strategies. So Comcast is still stupid IMO.
That said, a cable company with a streaming service is dumb and diametrically opposite strategies. So Comcast is still stupid IMO.