It began innocently enough. In December 2023, the Buffalo Bills, my daughter’s favorite team largely thanks to a preteen crush on Bills quarterback Josh Allen, played a big Week 16 matchup at the Los Angeles Chargers. It was a Saturday night. But after going through the usual exercise of flipping on ESPN, then ABC, then CBS, then NBC, I couldn’t find the game anywhere. A quick Google search led us to the right destination: Peacock.A property of NBC, Peacock is a streaming service best known as a place to watch repeats of Parks and Recreation and The Office. But in an effort to broaden the brand, Peacock was awarded this matchup and 7.3 million people tuned in. For context, Game 1 of the NHL’s Stanley Cup Final this year brought in about 4.9 million viewers.
In 2024, Peacock ponied up $110 million for the rights to a 2024 wild-card matchup between the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, marking the first-ever playoff game to be broadcast on a streaming service. A whopping 27.6 million tuned in. For context, the 2024 World Series between the two most popular franchises in baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees, averaged 15.8 million viewers.
