Comcast Got Q3 Olympics Boost Despite Shortfalls in Broadband, Theme Parks
Comcast found a way to get it past its usual challenges of consumers leaving its cable offerings and getting people to visit its theme parks: the Olympics.
This summer’s extravaganza from Paris helped the cable-and-entertainment conglomerate power its way past some of its business issues, with overall revenue up 6.5% to $32.07 billion compared to $30.1 billion in the year-earlier. The company said it saw a shot in the arm of $1.9 billion in revenue from the Olympics in the form of advertising cash and new subscriptions to its Peacock streaming service, even as it an exodus of broadband and video consumers from its large connection-services operations. Comcast has agreed to pay $7.75 billion for NBC and its affiliated properties to have broadcast rights to the Olympic Games between 2021 and 2032.
Even so, the Philadelphia owner of Xfinity web and cable services said it lost lost 87,000 broadband customers in the quarter, citing the end of the federal Affordable Connectivity Program, which subsidized internet access for low-income households in the U.S.
Profit was off 10% for the period, falling to $3.63 billion, or 94 cents a share, compared with $4.05 billion, or 98 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.
