Peacock’s major new features are going to enhance the way soccer fans watch Premier League games on the popular streaming service.

Speaking by phone to World Soccer Talk, NBCUniversal executives spoke about the new features that improve the Peacock experience.

We’re already familiar with Goal Rush, the Premier League TV Channel and the 175+ games per season available exclusively via Peacock. But what new bells and whistles are now available on Peacock Premium?

Peacock’s major new features for sports fans:

Catch Up With Key Plays

At the end of the 2021/22 Premier League season, NBCUniversal experimented with a new feature on Peacock called Catch Up With Key Plays. Now it’s live across a series of devices.

“[Key Plays] is really a way to make sure that fans don’t have to worry about arriving late to the live streams,” explains John Jelley, SVP, Product and User Experience at Peacock. “So what it does is it combines machine learning — so looking at what’s happening on screen — combined with live event data from the game, and automatically curates key highlights.

“So you come in [to the live stream] after it has started and still catch all the key moments. And it brings you back to the live point once you’ve done so.

Whenever you bring up the player controls in Peacock during a live game, you’ll see Key Plays being added as they happen. You can also rewatch a moment as a key play during the game itself. Plus you have the control to jump to specific points in the game. On top of that, there is a “Return to the game” button that takes viewers back to where they were before they clicked on the key play.

The Key Plays feature is available across several media devices. For example, they are AppleTV, Roku, X1, Samsung, FireTV, Android TV and XClass.

Live Binge

In the past, on a busy day of back-to-back Premier League games on Peacock, one of our common complaints was that we didn’t like having to jump out of one stream to find the next game. That has now been resolved.

“How this works is that at the end of a game, we give you the option to either auto-binge into the next event we think is most interesting — so it could be another Premier League match or something else,” Jelley said. “Or you can choose to go somewhere else where we’ve laid out a row of options. Essentially, curating things that we think you might be interested in at the end of that event.”

Improved navigation

Peacock has moved to a left-hand navigation. “By moving it to the left, we’ve actually made it easier to access wherever you are on the page,” adds Jelley. “So if you’re on the Premier League section, for example — or any rail — you can just navigate to the left and it’ll open up a key to that left-hand navigation.

“We’ve been testing all of these things to see how they do, and it’s driven more engagement in the overall experience with people finding things more easily.”

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Other important upgrades

* Player controls have been improved, reducing the size of the user interface and removing unnecessary buttons. It’s also now easier to access audio language and subtitles with fewer clicks.

• Broadcasts are now 1080p resolution on all devices. “We’re focusing on making the picture as sharp as possible,” added Jelley. “We’ve got a lot of the technical teams working on that.”

* All live events (and every on-demand game) are shown in 60 frames per second (FPS) on all devices except PS4 and PS5.

New features coming to Peacock in the future

Looking ahead to the future, NBCUniversal executives are excited about new features that are being developed. For instance, features on the roadmap for next year include:

• Dolby Atmos sound,
* 4K,
• 5.1 audio,
* and thumbnail scrubbing.

In the end, Peacock executives are laser focused on supporting the streaming service’s mission to always evolve the user experience.

Peacock’s offerings in addition to soccer

Aside from soccer, Peacock features TV shows, movies, news and other sports. Speaking of live sports, Peacock now also includes NFL, MLB, WWE, Notre Dame Football, USGA and The R&A Golf Championships, French Open tennis, Tour de France, NASCAR, INDYCAR and more.

When it comes to movies, Peacock includes films that are available soon after their theatrical release. For example, The Black Phone is now available on Peacock. Meanwhile, The Bad Guys is an example of a straight-from-theaters release. Furthermore, Jurassic Park Dominion is coming to Peacock on September 2.

Ultimately, Peacock Premium is available for $4.99 per month. Lastly, an ad-free version is available for $9.99 per month.