Comcast is betting that the Olympics will be a big boost for their year-old streaming service Peacock.
All but Men’s Basketball (which will require a premium sub) will be available on their ad-supported platform, and the audience, they hope, will be strong enough that their viewership will significantly increase and their churn will plummet, at least during the event.
But while the Olympics are only one bit of what the platform is focused on, an event so big with so many different events (and, with the Winter Olympics, occurring at regular intervals), this could be one of the better ways to use AI to figure out how to manage such a big, unwieldy event.
If Peacock collects all of the user data for its Olympics programming, that creates an incredibly rich amount of insight that can be used by machine learning platforms like Resonance AI.
Granted, this would not be of use for this Olympics, but could reveal countless viewer behaviors that would influence future programming decisions.
Based on the events, editing, announcing, breaks and other key choices, both subsequent Olympics as well as other sporting events could be tailored based on what is truly impacting the audience.
By using Resonance AI, Comcast would be armed with strategies on how to create the most compelling programming for all live events, an exceptionally important tool for the streaming wars.
And as Peacock will soon be the exclusive home of WWE, that brings a whole host of variables to look at and decide what is working for the audience and what isn’t.
There is a lot of work for Peacock to do to not get swallowed by its competition, but with smart leadership, healthy investment and tools like Resonance AI, it has a shot.