Peacock’s NFL subscriber bump looks like it’s over

Taylor Swift with fans during the Kansas City Chiefs-Miami Dolphins playoff game in January. Fans who weren’t at the stadium had to get a Peacock subscription to watch the game.

Remember back in January, when Peacock streamed that NFL game featuring Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift and signed up a bunch of new subscribers?

Some of them may no longer be Peacock subscribers. Comcast, Peacock’s parent company, reports that the service’s subscriber count dropped by 500,000 between the first and second quarters of this year. It’s now down to 33 million subscribers.

It’s the first time the streaming service has lost customers from quarter to quarter, though its year-over-year growth is still up considerably. It also posted increases in revenue and a decrease in operating losses.

Comcast PR (who spelled out to me that the company lost 500,000 subs in between the two quarters, and not the million-subscriber loss displayed on its financials — blame rounding!) says the loss “was anticipated, as we didn’t have planned tentpole content in 2Q.”

Which is another of saying what we’ve been saying here for some time: Churn is brutal for streamers that aren’t Netflix, and forces them to find new ways to get subscribers in the door to replace the ones that left. And Comcast is most definitely banking on the Paris Olympics, which kick off on Friday, to bring in fresh eyeballs and credit cards.

But, of course, there’s a very limited number of must-see sporting events that aren’t already spoken for, which means Comcast needs to find other ways to get people to stick around.

One way to do that is by offering discounts for subscribers who pay for a yearlong subscription. Another — which we’ve also talked about a lot here — is bundling Peacock with other services, which Comcast just started doing this summer by packaging Peacock with Netflix and Apple TV+.