WWE Content Host Peacock Grows In Subscribers But Faces Peak Losses

The 2021 move to exclusively license WWE Network content to NBC's Peacock streaming service in the United States has served WWE very well, guaranteeing the company in excess of $200 million annually, and giving WWE's content such prominent placement in the Peacock app that it's seemingly contributed to booming fan interest. It's paved the way for similar deals, too, with BINGE serving the same role as Peacock in Australia as far as absorbing WWE Network. On Thursday morning, NBC parent company Comcast released their first quarter earnings report, and it had some mixed news about Peacock: While financial losses on the project continue to pile up, subscriber numbers are still growing.

According to CNBC's writeup of the Q1 report, Peacock lost $704 million in the quarter, meaning that division lost 54% more than it did when it lost $456 million during the same quarter in 2022. That said, the number of Peacock subscribers jumped more than 60% year over year to 22 million for the quarter, and that's after having removed access to the free tier for new subscribers in January. Consequently, revenue was up 45% for Peacock in Q1, totaling $685 million.

Fan reception to the move of WWE Network content to Peacock has been mixed to negative, with the most common reason for the negativity being how Peacock's user interface doesn't lend itself well to pro wrestling content. Not only does it lack chapter marks, and thus the ability to search for specific matches and segments as one can on the legacy WWE Network available internationally, but it's resulted in everything being sorted by the kind of "season X, episode Y" labeling that is generally not used by wrestling promotions and/or their fans.