Sky is bringing the Peacock service to nearly 20 million Sky customers across Europe at no extra charge. It will be the first international expansion of the Peacock online video service from NBCUniversal, owned by Comcast, which also owns Sky. Peacock has 54 million customers in the United States, with 20 million monthy active accounts.
Peacock will be available across Sky platforms, including Sky Q, NOW and Sky Ticket, currently serving customers in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Brian Roberts, the chairman of Comcast, told analysts: “The benefits of this launch are tremendous. We will unlock incremental advertising revenue, introduce the Peacock brand and content catalog via Sky’s established platforms in key European markets and directly monetize our programming investments.”
Jeff Shell, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, said: “Comcast’s Xfinity has been integral to the success of our go-to-market strategy with Peacock in the U.S., and we see a similar opportunity to expand internationally with Sky.”
“We are excited to bring Peacock to millions of Sky customers and add incredible value to their platforms with a premium catalogue of the best entertainment from across NBCUniversal that is included with their subscription. By leveraging Comcast’s Xfinity platforms in the U.S., we were able to test and learn, quickly drive scale, usage, and brand awareness of Peacock. We look forward to doing the same with Sky in Europe.”
Dana Strong, the group chief executive of Sky, said, “Peacock will be a great addition for Sky customers with over 7,000 hours of content at no additional cost. This exceptional value add is another example of the great ways we are innovating to bring more benefits to our customers from the synergies across Sky, NBCUniversal, and Comcast Cable.”
Comcast lost 364,000 residential cable video customers in the second quarter of 2021, reducing its total to 18.23 million.
Sky had 23.20 million customer relationships across Europe, a loss of 248,000 in the second quarter of the year, although there were gains in the United Kingdom.