World Cup Ads and Peacock Profit Can't Stop Comcast's Broadband Bleed

Comcast lost 144,000 broadband subscribers in the third quarter, and no amount of World Cup advertising or Peacock profit papered over that. The Philadelphia conglomerate reported Thursday that Q3 revenue fell 6.1% to nearly $29.3 billion, down from nearly $31.2 billion a year earlier.

Net income rose 3.5% to just under $3.45 billion, or 97 cents per share, from $3.33 billion, or 90 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. On a pro-forma basis — stripping out cable-centric Versant Media, which spun off from NBCUniversal in January 2026, and the sale of Sky Deutschland to RTL Group in May 2026 — revenue was actually up 0.5%, with adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) up 0.8%. Accounting helps. Subscribers don't.

What drove the broadband decline?

The connectivity and platforms division, Comcast's core, saw revenue fall to $19.66 billion. The 144,000 broadband subscribers lost in Q3 compare poorly with an erosion of 91,000 in the year-earlier quarter. The video business fared no better: the company shed 274,000 domestic video customers, against 257,000 a year earlier.

The pattern is blunt. People keep cancelling the pipes. The pipes, meanwhile, still pay for much of everything else — including, soon, a separate NBCUniversal housing the TV, film and theme parks operations.

How much did the World Cup actually matter?

The media segment — the part being spun off as standalone NBCUniversal — rose 6.5% to $10.54 billion. Spanish-language World Cup telecasts on Telemundo did the heavy lifting: U.S. ad sales surged 14.6%. Strip out the tournament, and domestic ad sales would have grown just 0.3%. A quadrennial event is a fine guest. It doesn't pay rent.

The quarter's film slate helped too, with box-office performance led by "The Odyssey." Theme parks did not: that division's revenue dipped 4.4%, which the company attributed to lower revenue from park admissions.

Is Peacock finally standing on its own?

Peacock turned a pre-tax profit of $261 million, against a loss of $217 million in the year-earlier period. That's the streaming service's clearest sign of maturity since launch, a swing of nearly half a billion dollars in twelve months.

Revenue surged 33% year over year to $1.82 billion, though it slipped sequentially from $1.90 billion in Q2. Paid subscribers held flat at 48 million versus the second quarter, while the total was up 17% year over year.

The read for the industry: a World Cup can inflate a quarter, but Comcast's future now rests on two separate questions — whether the cable business can slow its subscriber losses, and whether the soon-to-be-independent NBCUniversal can grow without a soccer tournament in the building.