Peacock reportedly signed up 2.8 million subscribers for its NFL playoff game

• The NFL playoff game Peacock streamed in January drew a lot of eyeballs.
• It also drew a lot of new subscribers to Peacock: 2.8 million, per Antenna, an analytics service.

Earlier this month, NBC Universal said the NFL playoff game it streamed (mostly) exclusively on Peacock, its streaming service, was a huge success.

NBC and its parent company, Comcast, backed up that claim by citing ratings — it drew some 23 million viewers — and self-generated statistics about internet usage during the game. Crucially, it didn't say how many people signed up (and paid for) Peacock to watch the game.

Now we (probably) know: Peacock signed up nearly 3 million subscribers for the game.

That's according to subscription tracking service Antenna, which says 2.8 million people signed up over a three-day window leading up to the January 13 game. Antenna says that's the biggest sign-up around a "singular programming event" it has ever seen. (It says Disney+ signed up 2.5 million people on its launch day in 2019, though Disney announced 10 million signups. You can read about Antenna's methodology and the possible difference between those numbers here.)

A Comcast rep declined to comment on Antenna's report. Comcast reports earnings on Thursday.

So, yes: It appears that despite the many complaints you may have heard or seen, putting a very high-profile NFL playoff game (featuring shots of Taylor Swift cheering on Travis Kelce) on a paid streaming service will induce people to sign up for that service.

The next big question: How many of those folks will stick around and keep paying after the game — especially because churn is a major issue for streamers? We won't know that answer for a while.