NBC To Livestream All Beijing Olympics Events On Peacock

NBC announced Wednesday that it will stream all of the upcoming Winter Games in Beijing on Peacock, the network’s streaming platform that is separate from pay-TV subscriptions. Full replays of all events will be available as soon as they end.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the offering will include live broadcasts of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, simulcasts of NBC’s marquee prime time show on the broadcast network, medal ceremonies, highlight packages, studio shows, and more coverage beyond that.

Everything will be on Peacock’s premium tier, which costs at $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year — but is free to any Comcast Xfinity cable subscribers with a X1 box.

If you’re an Xfinity subscriber who hasn’t used Peacock before, you just have to sign up for an account online and link it to your cable account. Once you do that, the streams will show up on the Sports tab of your X1 screen. (As will Peacock’s live streams of NBC’s Sunday night NFL games, English Premier League soccer, British Open golf, and other sports events that don’t make it to TV.)

In addition to the Xfinity arrangement, Cox cable subscribers in other parts of the United States have the same free access to Peacock’s premium tier. Spectrum TV subscribers — of which there are many in big cities such as New York and Los Angeles — can get a year of the premium tier through their Spectrum accounts, and Spectrum internet subscribers can get a 90-day deal.

Peacock also offers everything on its own website and apps for phones, tablets, and connected TV devices such as Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire Stick. And you can pay extra to get everything ad-free: $9.99 per month ($5 on top of the regular plan) or $99.99 per year ($50 on top of the regular plan).

NBC has been streaming Olympics action online since 2008, free of charge to subscribers of the network’s cable channels. (Which isn’t really “free,” of course, because one had to be a cable subscriber.) There wasn’t any way for cord-cutters to legally access that coverage unless they borrowed someone else’s account, and NBC eventually developed the technology to track some of that down.

This past summer, NBC broke away from that for the first time by putting coverage of some high-profile events in Tokyo on Peacock: gymnastics and track and field on the free tier, and U.S. men’s basketball games on the paid tier.

For the Beijing Games, there won’t be standalone streams of live events on Peacock’s free tier. But there will be some live event coverage for free on the daily studio shows available through the “Channels” tab of Peacock, which is easily accessed through the top bar on the home screen.

NBC said more details on that subject, TV coverage of events, and Peacock’s studio shows will be announced soon.