Comcast Throws A Curve At MLB Phillies Fans

Here’s a bit of a curveball for regular viewers of Phillies games: The team’s three-game series against the Giants this weekend in San Francisco has been shifted off NBC Sports Philadelphia, the team’s regular television broadcast partner, and will instead stream nationwide exclusively on Peacock.

The Philadelphia Business Journal reports the immediate reason for the abrupt move was to drive subscriptions for NBC's fledgling streaming service, but it could also be a precursor to more local sports content airing there.

Major League Baseball and Peacock announced the change to the broadcast schedule in a joint release Monday afternoon. The three games will feature a combination of broadcasters from the Phillies (John Kruk and Jimmy Rollins) and the Giants (Jon Miller and Mike Krukow) with a 45-minute pregame show.

Phillies games normally air on NBC Sports Philadelphia while Giants games are broadcast on sister station NBC Sports Bay Area. Both are subsidiaries of Comcast Corp. unit NBCUniversal, which also owns and operates Peacock.

The goal for NBCU is to increase subscriptions for Peacock, which is free to Comcast Xfinity customers in a free ad-supported version with limited content, while premium tiers include a larger content library and access to additional NBC Sports and WWE Network content for an additional $5 a month.

Peacock launched on July 15, 2020 and primarily airs content from NBCUniversal studios and other third-party content providers, including television series, films, news, and sports programming. But a spokeswoman for the streaming service said the Phillies-Giants series will be the first time that Major League Baseball has aired on the platform.

The NBCU spokeswoman said many Xfinity customers don’t know they already have free access to Peacock with their cable subscriptions. The hope is once those dormant customers get signed up to watch the baseball games, they will stick around for Peacock’s other content. In addition to being free to X1 customers, viewers can sign up for Peacock at peacocktv.com/sports. Peacock reached 42 million signups in April.

The move of the Phillies-Giants series to Peacock comes a month after a Wall Street Journal report said NBCU could offer NBC Sports Philadelphia and its other regional sports networks for streaming on Peacock. The report said Philadelphia-based Comcast subsidiary NBCU planned to start streaming NBCSP – which broadcasts 76ers and Flyers games in addition to the Phillies – earlier this spring, but the strategy was halted over concerns it would conflict with NBCU’s overall streaming strategy.