Comcast Expects to Spend $2 Billion on Peacock in First Two Years

Gerry Smith, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Comcast Corp. plans to spend $2 billion on its coming Peacock service in the streaming outlet’s first two years, the entertainment giant’s chief financial officer said Monday.

“We will ramp quickly next year on spending on Peacock,” CFO Michael Cavanagh said at a UBS investor conference in New York. He said the company expects Peacock to break even by its fifth year.

Along with AT&T Inc.’s HBO Max, Peacock stands to be a relatively late entry in the burgeoning market for streaming-video services when it launches in April. Unlike paid-subscription rivals such as Netflix Inc., Walt Disney Co.’s Disney+ and Apple Inc.’s Apple TV+, Peacock will be free to Comcast cable subscribers. Cavanagh said the service would have various tiers of pricing for others.

Disney has said it plans to spend $1 billion on programming alone for the first year of Disney+, which launched last month and quickly signed up more than 10 million subscribers. Streaming behemoth Netflix heavily outspends its competitors, expecting to splash out $15 billion on programming this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards III, Lisa Wolfson