Last year, Peacock generated more than $2B in advertising revenue. The Paris Olympics mainly drove this success, leading to a robust third quarter. In the first quarter of 2025, the growth was more modest (around 2.5% compared to 2024), but the future looks more promising as NBCUniversal’s streaming service is expected to capitalize on the new NBA rights that they hold (together with Disney and Amazon) from the 2025-2026 season. Premium sports are indeed a cornerstone of Peacock’s content offering, with the likes of the NFL or the Premier League. Peacock’s ad business also benefits from the strong adoption of its ad-supported plans, which account for almost 80% of its overall subscriber base. The latter reached 41M subscribers at Q1 2025, and was fueled by the introduction of Peacock in Charter’s Spectrum TV Select bundle. However, this growing advertising revenue, combined with a better monetization of paid subscribers through subscription revenue streams, are still not strong enough to turn on profit. But Peacock is going into the right direction: EBITDA losses improved by more than $400M compared to Q1 2024, which adds to the $1B improvement recorded for the whole of 2024. As of Q1 2025, Peacock belongs to the top 10 US video platforms generating the largest advertising revenues, still lagging far behind behemoths like YouTube, but ahead of other streaming services with hybrid models, like Netflix or Disney+.
