All right. Welcome, everybody. My name is Katkan Maral. I'm the media cable and telco analyst at Evercore ISI, and we're very pleased today to welcome Matt Strauss from Comcast with us. Matt is, of course, the chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group. Matt, thanks so much for being here today.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
yeah absolutely um so you've been at comcast for more than two decades in 2019 you moved over to nbc universal to help lead the launch of peacock today you lead nbc use media group which looks very different today than it did just a few years ago the portfolio is more focused afterwards since peacock is scaling with its losses narrowing and the nba is now part of the company's broader sports strategy so let's start with the big picture what is the nbc universal media business uh that you're trying to build to over the next three to five years and what does success look
like yeah well and when you take a step back i mean nbc universal obviously is made up of our film our film group our our programming television group our theme parks and the media group and the media group is really made up of nbc bravo peacock uh nbc sports nbc news telemundo and our local stations and one of the things when we spun off versant and some of those cable networks it really gave us an opportunity to evaluate how to operate those media assets more like a portfolio you know there's a reason why we have these assets inside of nbc universal nbc specifically has been so critical to how we've built peacock it's like a megaphone when you're trying to drive scale peacock is also reaching new new viewers which allows us to to drive more sampling, where we can then drive people back to NBC or back to Bravo. And so operating as a portfolio is really where we see the big opportunity, but that required us to think differently about the org structure. And so a few months ago, we literally restructured the media group into what I like to call centers of excellence. And so a center of excellence would be, instead of having a programming team that was managing streaming and a programming team that was managing broadcast, It's one programming team, one marketing team, one advertising team, one decision sciences and research team. And what that has allowed us to do is to essentially think content first, platform second. And how do we get the broadest reach, the highest engagement, the best monetization for the overall portfolio? When you try to evaluate that, you know, what we look for is, well, how are we doing with viewership? How are we doing with engagement since we've kind of effectuated that approach? and there's some real signs that are kind of encouraging us that we are on the right track and so for example nbc was was ranked number one you know in total viewers for the season which is obviously a nice milestone but there's something else that's happening which is a little counterintuitive because in a world of cord cutting and declines in paid television and shifting viewing habits towards more on demand and streaming we're actually seeing a renaissance in live viewing and so if you watch the NBA playoff games like you know we had 16 million viewers watch you know that game seven you know that conference for us is the highest ratings that the NBA has seen in decades you know take franchises like the Kentucky Derby or the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade you know we are seeing the highest ratings for these events in their history the Macy's Day Parade we had the highest rating in 99 years bravo you know when look at the total hours consumed bravo in q1 versus q1 prior year across linear and streaming we're seeing an increase in hours and so probably the best example of what i'm describing is legendary february and so like that that is probably the best example of what it means to manage at a portfolio level because you had the super bowl the milan cortina olympics and the nba all-star game and within a 17-day window we drove over 225 million viewers generating nearly two billion dollars of revenue uh the super bowl was the actually the the most viewed live event in NBC's 100-year history but then what we also do since we're managing now is this portfolio approach is we shift these audiences to drive other values and so we drive viewers to sample a new peacock original the burbs which went on to be the number one original for peacock or we drive more viewers to promote the theme parks or we drive more viewers into late night or news and so this approach of really trying to manage as a portfolio is really core to the strategy drive maximum reach maximum engagement top line revenue and EBITDA but giving the teams this flexibility is where we see long-term growth and sustainability going forward that's that's
That's fantastic. Lots to unpack over there, but maybe let's focus a little bit on Peacock. You've now reached meaningful scale with 46 million paid subscribers, and a lot of excitement around the approach to profitability. At the same time, you've taken somewhat of a different approach than many of your competitors. You're prioritizing engagement, monetization, and a strong domestic position over a global subscriber land grab. Why are you confident that this strategy can drive durable profitability particularly as sports investments continue to ramp so um you
know this july is going to be our six-year anniversary since we launched peacock and if you go back to 2020 the market is dramatically different the streaming market is dramatically different than it was a few years ago so back in 2020 you may remember almost every streaming service was focused on ad-free binge viewing and scripted dramas and so when we evaluated this you know we actually uh believed that there was a white space opportunity in the streaming market that again played more to our strengths you know we are a at the core we are a broadcast network and so the notion of extending broadcast and modernizing it for streaming was where we saw the big opportunities so you could argue we zigged while others act to effectuate that strategy we had to do things very differently and so for example you know we're a dual revenue stream business today um i think two revenue streams is better than one revenue stream and so when we launched peacock it was very important that it was dual revenue stream which is why we anchored ourselves on subscription but really on advertising that allowed us to you know take advantage of the advertising infrastructure that we already had within mbc universal it was also a belief that the advertisers would eventually follow the eyeballs and that more people were going to move to streaming and so that was a core principle to how we started we then looked at the household demographics and so for a broadcast network we're trying to reach a broad household and have something for every individual in the home most streaming services at the time were focused on scripted originals movie pay one movies you know things that we also kind of also invested in you know we took back our movies and Universal movies and put them on Peacock we invested heavily in originals but if you want to reach a broader household demographic we had to expand the aperture of the content which meant well we need unscripted we need news we need sports we need local we need multicultural and so you know having a much broader array of programming we thought would also allow us to drive that habituation to get people to want to come to our service every single day the third thing that we did um which was a bit controversial is we really believed that live and linear was going to be relevant in streaming. And at the time, there was discussion that live or linear was dead. All of the data that we looked at would tell us otherwise. And so we said, yes, you have to have a service that's anchored and on-demand, but equally we want it to be anchored in linear and live. So we launched with dozens of linear channels back in 2020. But equally important is we built a technology platform that was designed for live at scale, which is very hard to do. I mean, delivering live over streaming is very different than delivering live over, you know, a cable or satellite. And so focusing on ensuring that we can deliver live events at scale meant, you know, what's the latency, ensuring that there's no pixelation, ensuring that the video and the audio are always in sync the tolerance of the consumer when things aren't working with live is zero and so we spent years hardening the platform but you see the results of that now with things like the olympics or when we have you know the super bowl you know we really do believe we've created a best-in-class platform and then the fourth thing that we did was we really you know made a big bold decision about sports which was another big unknown back in 2020 around what is the future of sports in a world of binge viewing, but coming from NBC, you know, we know the power of sports. It provides scale. We thought it could also provide acquisition for subscribers, and sports also is the opposite of binge viewing. It's about timeliness. It's about community. It's, you know, the TAM, the addressable market of sports, so you can calculate, you know, what that value is, and so building out a really big sports portfolio was very important to us back that and still is and so when you now look at where we are today as you mentioned we're at 46 million subscribers domestically when you compare Peacock to other streaming services we're actually in the same consideration set of most other streaming services when you compare domestic subs to domestic subs we're in generally the same consideration set but we also have 80% of our subs that are on the ad tier back to that dual revenue stream we have some event that's live on Peacock almost every single day back to that strategy of having live in sports and you know we mentioned on the last earnings call that you know we were you know pacing to profitability in Q2 you know I'm proud to share we will be profitable in Q2 which is a big milestone for the company it's a big milestone for the team but I think it's also beginning to a validation of the strategy that we've had from the beginning because we've been very consistent and disciplined on the execution of our strategy and i think that that's just an example where there's not one way to approach a streaming uh you know strategy or market you know sometimes you have to play to your strengths which is what we've been doing at mbc
universal that's great and you know profitability and q2 certainly a big milestone and that's on top of all the investments that you've been making as well so that's that's great um you know one thing i want to double click on is the international side and you know you've been very and i think the strategy i can't believe it's been six years peacock day by the way i think was probably one of my you know favorite events um at launch so that was a great investor event um but going back to international you know you've very clearly positioned peacock as primarily a domestic streaming platform maybe touch on a little bit more in terms of you know why you don't need to be global in order to achieve the scale that you need well i don't think we need to be global
in order for us to continue growing the service growing revenue and scaling i think maybe this is just another example of zigging while others are zagging there's not one approach when it comes to how you want to build a streaming service but you have to take a step back i mean when you look at NBC Universal obviously we are a global company our theme parks are global we own sky in the UK Italy and Germany our film group is global we distribute our content in almost every country across every window and every distribution platform we distribute cable networks internationally just like we do here domestically and we also have streaming services that we have internationally as well sky has now TV we have a streaming service that's an unscripted subscription service called hey you which we distribute internationally in Latin America we have a service called Universal Plus and so it's all about trying to identify what's the best way to monetize your programming when it comes to domestic you know domestic has the highest share of video it has the highest advertising it has the highest ARPU potential and so it was very important for us to anchor ourselves predominantly as a domestic streaming service because that's where we saw the biggest opportunity for profitable subs and and the best return and it also allows us to take advantage of the broadcast infrastructure that we have in place and so i i think that you're going to continue to see us be very measured the piece that i think also sometimes you know gets lost in translation is that the technology platforms that we've built are global and that was by design to also just give us optionality and so what I mean by that is the technology stack that we use for Peacock we call internally the global streaming platform or GSP and so Peacock sits on GSP now TV which is the sky streaming service also sits on top of GSP we run the it's exact same platform that we're running in Eastern and Central Europe we have a joint venture called sky showtime which is in 22 countries that service also sits on GSP which we run and manage and so to the extent we ever decided that we did want to expand globally technology wouldn't be a gating factor for us it's about us just kind of continue to evaluate on a territory by territory basis what do we think is going to give us the best return and if it makes sense for us to launch a streaming service then that's obviously something that that we'll continue to evaluate, but we're constantly monetizing our content very, very successfully, and we'll continue to do that globally, and I think that we're really well positioned to determine what's gonna be the best return for the investment of the content that we're producing. But you're not gonna see us go global just for the sake of chasing subs. You know, we have very little interest in subs that have low ARPU, or subs that are, I don't wanna, for lack of a better phrase, empty calorie subs it's really about getting the best return to monetize our content that's going to give us the best sustainable growth and long-term value
that's great and I think what sometimes misunderstood is just because you're not in certain international markets with a streaming product doesn't mean that you're not monetizing content in those markets exactly we we you know the
team under Donna Langley does a very very good job licensing our content we license our content in every major country across every window every platform and so you could do the calculus on what's the best return and you know we find that licensing the content has been a very successful strategy for us obviously in the united states we licensed content but we launched peacock but there's nothing preventing us on a market by market basis from deciding if we wanted to launch peacock internationally it's something we're constantly evaluating but again we're going to continue to be very disciplined and measured about about it, and maybe this is just another example of us zigging while others are zagging, but I don't think there's only one approach to how you might wanna look at global when it comes to streaming, but that shouldn't be interpreted that we don't have a very successful monetization engine for how we license our content internationally. Absolutely, okay.
Let's talk about Peacock pricing and ARPU a little bit. You know, at Peacock, you've taken pricing while continuing to grow. So as you expand Peacock's role within the broader NBC Universal ecosystem, how are you thinking about the next phase of monetization, whether it's pricing, advertising, bundles and partnerships, while you're also still keeping the service compelling and affordable enough for consumers?
Yeah, well, I think when you look at the Peacock retail price point in the market, I actually can argue we're undervalued. You know, there are other streaming services in the market that are almost 2x to 3x, the retail price point of Peacock, that arguably don't have the same breadth and depth of content. We've also built a very, very strong portfolio of sports rights. And so I do think that there's opportunity for more rate just based on the value of what we offer in the market. coming from cable uh you know where i've spent 15 years at comcast you know i think that there were signs early on that we saw in streaming that actually reminded us of pay television and i actually spoke about this back in 2019 which is if you look at some of the trends of streaming you know what you're seeing is you know consumers are subscribing to more and more streaming services which is not a surprise because not one streaming service is likely going to give you enough video calories as a consumer and so now the average consumer has four or five streaming services that they subscribe to the cost of those streaming services were inevitably going to go up because the cost of content hasn't come down and so that what would likely happen is that the market would gravitate towards bundling which is obviously how pay TV was had so much growth and so one of the foundational parts of the bundle was that you know the more you take the better the price the better the value as a consumer bundling could also be very good for a media company because typically you see lower churn with a bundle and lower cost per acquisition but there was one thing that was always anchored the bundle in pay television for years and that was sports another reason why we felt early it was going to be very important for us to have a very, very compelling and broad sports portfolio because if the market did move to bundling, doing those kinds of deals are not hard. Doing those kinds of deals, getting the right wholesale economics is going to be critical. Otherwise, you're going to have what I mentioned before, like these low-calorie subs. And so we made a very disciplined decision that if that's where we thought the market was going to go, let's build out our portfolio, but we spent the first four or five years predominantly focused on direct to consumer. Maximum share of wallet out of the market, which is why the majority of our subs are direct build subs. And let's actually try to build healthy ARPU. And then at the right time, we would start to look at the next wave of growth, which is to focus more on bundling. I think that's where we are now. I think it's pretty obvious the market has gravitated towards bundles it certainly does not mean we're not going to keep our eye on direct build or direct to consumer because again those are the most profitable subs for us but you know this is what led us to do deals with apple where we now have a bundle with apple you know apple's content proposition is very complementary to our content proposition and so apple also has very strong sales channels given the the multiple touch points of apple and so that made a lot of strategic sense for us we did a bundling deal with walmart which again we saw a lot of incrementality of doing a deal with walmart because you know they tend to focus more on cost-conscious consumers and c and d counties and so we saw that as an opportunity we've done some channel deals but very targeted channel deals just focused on the ad free tier of peacock because is only 20% of our base is on that ad-free tier. It has a higher retail price point. So we could experiment more. And so we have bundle, sorry, channel deals with Amazon and we have a channel deal with Roku. And so we're now at a point where I think the next wave of growth for us is going to be to continue to lean more into these bundles. But we're coming at it from a different angle because I think a lot of other media companies have been leaning into bundles for years. And now you're seeing us move more into that space but I think that's going to be a big part of the next wave of growth for us over the next few years.
And importantly with strong economics because I think we've seen a lot of examples of media companies go in more for just having that relationship and the subscriber land grab approach as opposed to
you know what makes sense to the P&L. Yeah well look I think I think Comcast has a reputation for being very disciplined you know Mike Cavanaugh and Brian Roberts are students of the business. we've said from the very beginning for us this is not a streaming is not a sprint it's a marathon I've rephrased that to say it's not a sprint it's a marathon at a sprinter's pace because we certainly you know feel you know we want to move and move quickly and decisively but we have very little interest in having subs that have negative CLV subs that are not really driving engagement in ARPU and so there's no question that because we've been so deliberate in how we built our sub base that we might not have scaled as quickly as some other services but I feel very good about the sub mix and base that we have and you can see that in the revenue if you look at the Q1 revenue we announced for a Peacock it's actually very similar to the streaming revenue of other streaming services that have almost double the subscribers of us and so having a very healthy mix of subs is important and you're absolutely right you're going to see us continue to be disciplined about how we approach bundle deals to make sure they're driving incrementality and positive clv but i think this is where the strength of our portfolio especially the sports portfolio that we've built allows us to come to the table with a very different value proposition and i think as a result that's what's allowing us to do deals that we feel very good about with partners that we also feel are very strategic to us and so So I think that that's going to be another opportunity as we look ahead over the next few years.
That's great. Maybe just continuing on with the pricing element of it. You know, premium sports rights continue to get more expensive across the industry. When you think about shifting from pricing to managing the profitability perhaps, how do you balance investing aggressively in sports with maintaining a sustainable and consumer-friendly model over the long term?
Well, again, I think back to what I said at the beginning, I think this is where managing as a portfolio helps us because when we evaluate sports rights, it's very rare that we would evaluate it just through the lens of streaming. And so we have the broadcast network. We obviously have a streaming platform. We actually launched a sports cable network last year, a 24-7 cable network, NBC Sports, which again might seem a bit counterintuitive. but you have to remember that the pay tv ecosystem still has millions of subscribers it generates a significant amount of revenue and we saw an opportunity for us as part of our portfolio to also have a sports cable network in the mix and so I think what that allows is that when we approach the leagues and we obviously have relationships with all of the major major leagues I think that you know what they're looking for is they want scale and so the fact that we have the ability to kind of allow multiple ways for a consumer to access the sports content broadcast and streaming is a real strength that we bring to the table and we actually like having sports content on broadcast because we also simulcast it on cable and we simulcast it on streaming but you know that's a huge benefit to what we bring to the table through some of these relationships I think because of that approach it's also good for the consumer because we're giving them choice if you want to watch on broadcast which includes over the air if you want to get it through streaming you offer it on streaming we're giving multiple touch points for how a consumer can get access to the content and for us because of this portfolio approach we have multiple ways to monetize it and so when we're evaluating a sports deal and we look at the return on the investment we don't have to get that return just through streaming we can amortize that over the broader portfolio and again it allows us multiple ways to monetize and so I think that's what allows us to approach how we you know how we look at these deals going forward and the way we've done the deals in the past I think again that's one of the benefits of what we bring to
the table as NBC Universal that's great maybe sticking with the theme of content investments you know and we've talked a little bit about other operators and what's worked well and what hasn't worked well I think the industry has learned that not every content investment creates the same value in streaming especially how are you thinking about where NBCU should lean in in terms of sports versus Bravo versus next day NVC originals film when doing unscripted you know a lot of buckets to
consider it's a great question so the answer to that question actually evolves depending on where you are in your life cycle of a business and so there's certain content that we find drives acquisition and drives ratings and drive scale sports is an example of that pay one movies is an example of that originals invent which is what led us also to the the long-term relationship they have with Taylor Sheridan yeah who's going to be coming to NBC Universal in the coming years and so you have to have the right investment mix around the the type of content that's to drive those kinds of responses which are critical also that type of content also is really strong for building a brand but there's an Achilles heel to that which is if you bring on a lot of subs if you don't have the right mix to drive retention engagement you're gonna have churn and churn is the Achilles heel of any subscription business and so that's where we also invest in content that drives that engagement what typically you know drives that kind of of habituation and viewership are things like library content which we happen to at mbc universal have a huge expansive library of programming unscripted programming news drives retention local and so you've you've got to manage it almost like a a mutual fund to hedge now we are very focused especially over the next few years we think engagement is one of the most important metrics it doesn't mean that we're not going to continue scaling the business because we we will but growing share of time is really really important so building out that library component of what drives engagement and individuation is going to be important i think one of the things that i didn't fully appreciate when i came to nbc from comcast was just how much people love our content i see that now because i have all the data but there's real fandoms, real IP that's beloved by millions of people around the world. The Office is a fandom. SNL is a fandom. Fast and the Furious, Jurassic, these are fandoms. Bravo is a fandom. Yeah, and so I'll give you some fun facts about Bravo. Bravo's maybe one of the biggest fandoms that was inside of paid television that we were able to expand into streaming on on peacock but you know bravo viewers on peacock typically have 33 lower churn bravo users typically watch about 75 episodes of content a month they are content carnivores and then what happens is that when you have one of these fandoms like we do and we can demonstrate that we're expanding the TAM the addressable market well that's the flywheel to then invest back into that fandom and so in the case of Bravo you know we invested and launched just an unscripted show called The Traders which was a huge success for us it's actually the number one unscripted show in Q1 of last year it's won multiple Emmy Awards you know Love Island is another example by the way Love Island's new season for anyone interested premieres tonight at nine o'clock Eastern Time that's a phenomenon for us next-gen NYC which is another Bravo show which when we premiered that was the biggest new premiere Bravo's ever had in its history and so we're creating these flywheels and we're building out these audiences but then back to the portfolio approach you know we launched a Peacock original called all her fault which was one of the most popular and successful originals on Peacock the majority of the viewers of that original were the Bravo users and And so how we're able to move these viewers around the portfolio and invest in these fandoms is how we see the continued growth. And so we're not trying to cast a broad net and be all things to all people, trying to be very surgical about the fandoms and the franchises and the IP that plays to our strengths as a company. How do we super serve them? And how do we continue to nurture and grow them? And that's the flywheel and the opportunity that we're gonna continue to invest in.
That's great. Next I wanna talk about where streaming is kind of headed and I'll be a little bit more specific in a second. But I think, you know, when we look at the industry, we're all trying to figure out, you know, in two, three, four, five years from now, Netflix is probably not going to look like the Netflix of today. Same thing with Disney+. They tried experimenting with a few different things. We'll see how that evolves. And certainly with Peacock as well. You made some comments recently at South by Southwest talking about how Peacock is evolving from being a streaming platform to more of an entertainment platform. You've launched vertical video, gaming. maybe talk a little bit about how that strategy to connect to your broader focus on engagement is looking like fandom, participation over the next few years, where's Peacock evolving into?
Yeah, well, I'll try to be mindful of time. I could talk about this for hours. So here's the way that I would frame it. Sometimes when we talk about streaming, it's been categorized as like the streaming wars, which is to me a complete misnomer because there's not one winner in streaming just like there's not one winner in broadcast or one winner in cable or one website winner there could be multiple winners but if there's a battle in my opinion the battle is gonna be for time share of time and so when you and this is an area that we spend a huge amount of focus really unpacking to try to understand this and so when you look at where people spend time with video the average consumer in in the United States spends five to six hours a day consuming video. Nobody admits to that. It's actually not that hard to watch five or six hours of video, watch a sporting event, watch a movie, watch news, you realize it's not that hard. That number has been pretty consistent over the past decade when you look at Nielsen. But how people spend those video calories has changed pretty dramatically because you're seeing, and this also depends on the demographic of of where you sit but you know you're seeing more time that's being spent on social media on user-generated content on on video gaming on video podcasting and so I think when we evaluate this you know one of the realizations that we've had is that we are actually creating demand we're building these franchises we're building these fandoms we're creating demand through our networks and through our streaming service but these streaming platforms have not evolved at the same pace as the fandom and as a result we're creating the demand and then we're pushing viewers to go elsewhere to consider continue engaging the best example i can probably give you is the you know i mentioned earlier love island you know if you watched that show last summer that show was a bit of a phenomenon um and you know when you look when we looked at you know love island you know you know typically what was happening is like six days a week people were tuning in back to the habituation which was again a very uh calculated decision of why something like love island made such sense to us but what what what streaming services typically do us included is at the end of a show or the end of an episode we use an algorithm to say oh well you like this show you should watch that show and there's nothing wrong with that it's actually very effective at driving discovery but with love island what happened was people didn't want to watch another show at the end of the episode they wanted to continue talking about love island and we didn't have anything else for them to do around love island and so then the viewer leaves and then they go to social media and they look at clips or they they're looking for community they'll go on looking for podcasts they'll look for video games anything to stay in that world that they were in that we created and so you know one of the interesting facts about that is that when you look at last summer the number one app in the app store at the height of love island was the love island app the number two app was chat gpt and so it just kind of highlights the the size of these fandoms and so we have now for a few years been evolving our platform we don't call peacock a streaming platform because that's too limited we think of it as an entertainment platform as a participatory entertainment platform with a very specific north star which is we should be the best place for fans to engage and consume with our content that's how we're going to grow share of time that's how we're going to retain more subs on the platform but we have to build a platform that's designed to super serve these fans and we were not doing that and so we started to put the pieces in place and so one example that you mentioned was vertical video. And if you look at social media platforms, almost all of them have embraced vertical video. We don't need to recreate the wheel. We just need to adopt some of the behaviors of what consumers are doing on other platforms. And so we launched vertical video over a year ago. And so now when you go on Peacock, we have vertical video clips, we have vertical video sports highlights, we announced we're going to be producing original content in vertical video we've licensed micro dramas which is a whole other category of content that we now have on peacock and so we have built out a catalog around mobile which is meeting the customer where they are to give them more reasons to want to watch on on peacock there's another reason why this is important if you look back to what i said about the olympics 20 of viewers who engaged with vertical video during the olympics went on to watch long-form content or tune in live the nba 25 of viewers that were watching the nba on peacock were also engaging with vertical video and so there's a strategy around okay well vertical video is a very important piece to that experience gaming is another one and so you know we have a wheel of fortune and jeopardy on Peacock. You can watch them, the shows. Well, why not let those fans play Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy? And so we didn't want to create those games off platform. We wanted to build them into the platform. And so now you can play Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. We just launched Jeopardy yesterday. Law and Order, Dick Wolf, another fandom. Well, why not allow viewers to be the detective and solve crimes and offer a Law and Order game? And so we partnered with Wolf Games. they produced an exclusive AI driven game for us you can now play the law and order game on Peacock podcasting we were experimenting with video podcasting but again we're not trying to cast a brunette we're trying to be very purposeful interactive features you can now when you're watching the NBA you can pick camera angles you could you know we're introducing you know real-time data and probability as overlays like we're enhancing the experiences there's one other thing that we're really excited about which is back to Bravo is this summer we're launching something called the Bravo verse and this has been something that's been months in the making but the way it's gonna work is we've used AI to scan thousands of hours of our Bravo library the viewer then tells us okay well what are the Bravo celebrities that you like what are the storylines that you're interested in and then we create using the AI the AI engine a personalized playlist for you with an AI avatar of Andy Cohen who's the face of Bravo and now you can go down the Bravo rabbit hole but we're now giving those fans a completely new experience in a new way to engage with our content but we designed this in a way that we could extrapolate that same experience to other catalogs and other fandoms and so this notion of evolving from streaming to entertainment this is how we're going to drive more engagement this is how we're going to drive monetization and new forms of monetization it doesn't mean we're not going to continue partnering with these other platforms because they're very important to the ecosystem but I think that this notion of being the best place for your fans and to super serve them is the journey that we've been on for a few years and I'm very proud of where we are because I think that we are in some ways further ahead based on some of the features that not only we've announced with the we've launched in the market over the past 24 months and we have several new ones that
are going to be coming as well that we're really excited about well there is um as successful as bravo con i think um you know you have a if you want to get a sense of what it means to be a fan
if go to a like a fan fest bravo con um is unlike anything you will ever experience i mean these are these are super, super fans. And I give a lot of credit to Frances Berwick in what she's created with Bravo, but I think we're just at the tip of the spear in how we can continue to grow that fandom and super serve it. And I think Bravo is just one of several that we have that are part of our strategic sites.
It's so fascinating because I feel like when you go back five, 10 years ago, when every media company started to pivot towards streaming, you know everyone would the perspective was let's maybe take what we had in linear and put it on direct-to-consumer and I feel like everyone kind of missed out on the social element of it and the user-generated content opportunity and all that kind of went to you know big tech and it kind of seems like all the traditional media companies are trying to take back some of these fandoms or opportunities and monetize in a different way yeah well I think there's
are partially there's a partial reason for that which is when you look at a lot of the tech platforms for streaming a lot of the interfaces were designed for the television because that's where the majority of the consumption was happening and then you port that platform and you render it on mobile and you render it on PCs and but it's all a derivative of the television what we have learned is that you have to take advantage of the modality of what are the devices that consumers are using like when you hold your phone you're probably using your forefinger or your thumb to swipe you're not doing that on your television that introduces a completely different dynamic in the types of content and experiences that you want to build towards and so this is where we're thinking right experience right device right consumer and it's a different mindset than where I think streaming started which was predominantly just anchored on the television yeah okay we have five
minutes left and two questions so I want to make sure we cover both of these you know first one's kind of talking a little bit about the broader Comcast ecosystem so Comcast has talked more about leveraging the totality of the company including the harmony work between you and Steve Froney you know from the media side where does Comcast create the most tangible value for NBC Universal in terms of distribution product data marketing advertising customer relationships or anything else that you'd like to touch on well you
You know, when Comcast acquired NBCUniversal, one of the first things that we did is we created this program which we called Symfony. And if you're not familiar with Symfony, it's essentially taking the marketing inventory across Comcast and NBCUniversal and getting the entire organization to align around key 10-pole priorities. And a 10-pole priority could be Universal's releasing a new blockbuster film over the summer, the temple priority could be the Olympics and I think when you look at the success of Symphony it's arguably one of our superpowers it's culturally something that we do across the broader company that's been very successful and effective and proven and I think that this is kind of somewhat of our secret sauce what Steve Crony and I have been working on together and Steve and I have known each other for almost 20 years and he's a fantastic partner is how do we evolved Symfony into what we're now calling Harmony which is really the an evolution around how do we integrate work streams across Comcast and NBC Universal but very specifically to align around how do we share data how do we align our product and tech organizations how do we think about how we go to market around key initiatives how do we you know look at local and national advertising and how could we potentially you know monetize that inventory better with a very specific purpose of driving broadband wireless peacock growth and overall engagement and monetization and there was a couple of things that were relatively low-hanging fruit like for example low-hanging fruit was well let's bundle Peacock with gig subscribers because that's a way for Comcast Cable to add more value to their highest-end customers it's a way for us to add measured bundled growth for Peacock and so that was something that we went to market with or let's make Peacock the app that's kind of like the anchor tenant on the X1 video platform we know the value of what's one more hour per user per month we know the value of getting somebody to watch Peacock one more day a month well let's you know find new ways to drive more that that sampling and promotion and Steve and the team have done a phenomenal job we're now looking at well how do we look at Peacock and NBC's inventory as a sales channel to drive broadband and wireless and when you start looking at the data you know Peacock yes has 46 million subs 46 million subs is about a hundred million monthly active users when you look at the number of users per sub when we share data and we know well oh those hundred million monthly active users who lives in a Comcast footprint do they have Comcast broadband or wireless well can we actually now target them with a special offer those are the types of of initiatives that we're starting to align around, both on the Peacock side, as well as being more targeted and personalized with some of the inventory that we have at NBCUniversal. I'll give you another example. Comcast has been very focused on what they call real-time 4K. Real-time 4K is focusing on reducing latency around delivering 4K content over the internet to kind of highlight the superiority of the Comcast network. And so we at NBC have been leaning into delivering more 4K content so they can better showcase that that that capability or membership would be another example Comcast launched a membership program for their for you know to improve the tenure of their customers well when we think about driving churn down for Peacock or ways to create more more value for the retail price point of Peacock we're good we're starting to look at experimenting and testing a membership program for Peacock as well and so if we could create a membership platform that we could both tap into if we can create a platform where we're sharing benefits across the company these are the types of initiatives that we're really excited about and we've got the senior leadership team at NBC and Comcast completely aligned we meet on a regular basis on these integrated work streams we we have the full support of Mike Cavanaugh who has been a huge advocate of this and it's early it's early but at the same time I when I think about growth opportunities you know this is probably one of the areas that i'm the most excited about because this is where we're going to continue to get more economies of scale i think we're going to truly unlock a lot of the value across the broader company by how everybody is getting aligned and
working better together that's perfect we're out of time but i'm going to ask this last question anyway and it's okay if we go a few minutes um so says i um you know a lot of conversation today has focused on the strength that we're seeing across the media business but just given how how important media is as a flywheel for the broader NBC Universal ecosystem. Can you take a step back maybe with a broader lens and shed some light on other parts of the company as well?
Yeah, well, first, thank you for letting me go so long on media. I didn't even get to talk about the World Cup coming to Telemundo, or this is our 100 year anniversary at NBC, which we're very excited about. But when you take a step back, but when you look at Universal Film, Donna Langley and the team have done a phenomenal job. you know when you look in 2026 you know Super Mario Galaxy is is grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide that franchise has grossed almost two billion dollars worldwide you've got the Michael Jackson movie which has done very well and that was released in theaters a few weeks ago you've got a new Steven Spielberg movie Disclosure Day which is being released in June which looks amazing you've got a new Christopher Nolan movie the Odyssey that's coming this summer and so that team has got some great momentum when you look at the theme parks under mark woodbury and team you know they just celebrated epic universe one year anniversary they are getting ready to launch a new kids theme park in frisco texas this summer they're making good progress uh in the uk around the theme park there i mean if you remember when we shared on the earnings we did say that you know we are seeing on the international side you know a little bit of you know softness that we're keeping an eye on we're seeing some of that domestically but when you look overall across the broader NBC Universal portfolio we feel incredibly excited about the momentum about the growth and about the long-term profitability of the overall company and so we're excited as we get ready to celebrate our hundred year anniversary
that sounds fantastic Matt thanks so much for being here thank you so much I
APPRECIATE IT.