Why is Peacock's Olympics coverage such a confusing mess?

Slate

Peacock subscribers have been complaining online about the NBC Universal streaming service usability during the Tokyo Games. "Not only does it fail to live up to its promise, but lots of people are also confused when they’re supposed to try to tune in on Peacock as opposed to NBC’s other myriad platforms," says Jake Dean, adding: "Now that the Olympics have rolled around, NBC is back to touting Peacock. In particular, it has used both advertising and social media to emphasize the idea that you can watch some events live on the app. But saying you can use Peacock to watch live Olympics coverage is a bit of a stretch, even setting aside the time zone challenges. Peacock itself is a bit confusing: There’s a website as well as a smart TV app, and both offer a combination of on-demand content (where you can select which events/shows you want to watch) and live channels. Think Netflix for NBC, mixed with some actually live content. However, most of the Peacock coverage for Tokyo is pre-recorded episodes of replays and highlights with commentary from Snoop Dogg and a live (at least the first time) daily highlights show from the NFL Network’s Rich Eisen. Eisen’s Tokyo Gold recap show takes up eight hours of daily coverage, with seven of those hours being replays of the first one...And the actual live coverage of events? It’s pretty limited. An NBC Sports article outlines the schedule for Peacock streaming (mostly gymnastics and track prelims), but pretty much only early morning content. The primetime schedule for Peacock Olympics coverage is said to be determined, but each night I have found nothing available live when I go to check. (To be fair, part of this is due to time differences, but some other NBC channels are still showing coverage at this time.) Peacock will broadcast the team gymnastic finals for both men and women for free, but to watch any of the men’s basketball coverage you must upgrade to Peacock Premium—which costs $4.99 a month (unless, again, you already have Xfinity internet or a cable subscription). It’s another $5 to get rid of ads. But that’s the point of all of this: NBC doesn’t want you to enjoy a ton of free streaming. It wants to entice you to purchase a subscription. Executives have been prepping for more than a year to boost subscriptions through this one marquee event—following the strategy of exclusive-content driven subscription models that have typified the launches of platforms like HBO Max and Disney+. Honestly, it has worked: Peacock posted its best Saturday ratings ever."