Comcast beats forecasts as sports, broadband and wireless drive growth

Comcast posted a stronger-than-expected first quarter, giving Wall Street a fresh sign that live sports, broadband bundles and wireless service are still propping up the business even as cable TV keeps eroding. Revenue rose to $31.457 billion from $29.887 billion a year earlier, adjusted earnings came to $0.79 a share, and the company produced $3.9 billion in free cash flow while returning $2.5 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Comcast shares jumped as much as 8% in premarket trading on the results.

The most important operational improvement came from connectivity. Domestic residential broadband net losses narrowed to 65,000, an improvement of 117,000 from a year earlier, when Comcast lost 183,000 broadband customers. Cable TV losses also eased to 322,000 from 427,000 a year ago. At the same time, domestic wireless net additions reached 435,000, the company’s best quarterly result on record, lifting total wireless lines to 9.7 million and bringing penetration to 16% of Comcast’s domestic broadband base. Even so, connectivity and platforms revenue fell 2% to $17.32 billion, showing that the wireless gains are not yet fully offsetting weakness in the core bundle.

The media unit delivered the loudest surprise. Media revenue surged 60.8% to about $7.28 billion, powered by the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina and NBA All-Star Weekend. Comcast said its “Legendary February” slate used the reach of those events to drive record advertising and Peacock growth. Peacock passed $2 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, but its loss widened to $432 million. TheWrap said the streamer added 2 million paid subscribers, reaching 46 million.

Brian L. Roberts and Mike Cavanagh said 2026 is “an important year of execution” and said they were seeing early signs that Comcast’s pivot was taking hold. That pivot increasingly rests on using live sports and big-event coverage to support the broader cable bundle, while pairing video with broadband and mobile. Comcast’s June 26, 2025 internet overhaul added four national tiers with unlimited data, a price guarantee and the Xfinity WiFi Gateway included, a direct response to fixed wireless competition.

The company has also been using live events to showcase its network muscle. Comcast Business said it powered THE PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass in March with one of the largest temporary network deployments in professional golf and enabled the tournament’s first RealTime4K viewing experience for Xfinity customers. The quarter suggests Comcast’s sports advantage and bundling strategy can still cushion the blow of cord-cutting, but investors will be watching whether that mix becomes a lasting blueprint or just a well-timed boost.