NBC’s Peacock and the NFL had a big game on January 13 when they streamed the playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs, but not all football fans were happy.
CNN reported that 23 million viewers watched the game, and it took up almost 30% of the internet’s capacity in terms of internet traffic during the game. It’s unclear if streaming live events at this scale is even feasible going forward due to bandwidth constraints.
Then there’s the fact that the majority of football fans weren’t already subscribers of Peacock’s streaming services, so that meant some 2.8 million people had to sign-up to be able to watch the game.
My house is just one of those numbers. We signed up for Peacock to watch the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Chargers game on December 23, then I forgot to cancel the service (which is the goal of every streaming service and SaaS company, and I fell for it).
Then After Dolphins-Chiefs game I swore I was going to cancel Peacock, but then I heard that the movie Oppenheimer would begin streaming on Peacock on February 16, so now I figure I’ll just cancel after that.
All that said, I give myself a 10% chance of successfully canceling before the end of February because I’m sure another must-see event will pop up and delay my cancellation. Then with the Paris Summer Olympics starting in July I’m guessing I’d need to sign up again, but more likely I’ll have forgotten to cancel Peacock so I’ll probably still be a customer.
So yea, Peacock has me right where they want me in their streaming trap.
