DAZN Streaming and Why it's Taking Over On-Demand Sports Content

DAZN, pronounced as “The Zone”, is “the first global pure-sport live and on-demand streaming service” as it is told on their website. The service is owned by the British sports media company Perform Group.

It was created in 2015 and launched in 2016 in some European countries, its arrival has been called as disruptive, and its business model simple and straightforward.

As soon as it got media exposure, it was referred to as the “Netflix of Sports”, but the Chief Revenue Officer replied saying that DAZN’s approach was “much more complex”, because their service includes live stream video, more than just archive footage.

The number of subscribers has kept growing, they expect to have 20 million by 2022, expanding the service to nine countries, launching it in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, then Japan, in 2017, Canada, 2018, US and Italy, and now, they’re arriving in Spain and Brazil.

But… how did they made it?

Simple, buying broadcasting rights of world-wide known sports events, like the FIFA World Cup and UEFA's competitions matches, and domestic competitions like English Premier League and Spanish La Liga for most of the covered areas.
The NBA is available for some European countries, NFL for most of the countries they cover, Canada included, where, of course the NFL has a massive amount of fans.

They also have the rights of some regional competitions only for the countries involved, like the case of the Copa Sudamericana, that is just for Brazil. Also, they have invested and focused a lot in combat sports, like boxing and MMA, as the platform’s strategy to make a successful entry to the US market.

But the list, as you can see, is quite long, and it includes minor sports events or sports popular only in certain countries as well.

Also, they have reached agreements with sports celebrities to join them as brand ambassadors to increase the brand status, people like Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Jose Mourinho, Canelo Alvarez or Paolo Maldini lined-up that team.

But with the Mexican boxer Saúl “Canelo” Alvarez, they decided to make one step more, signing a $365 million contract for the next eleven fights in the coming five years, that contract has been called “the richest contract in sports history”.
It’s $33.18 million per fight, a little bit more than $2 per second.

DAZN, of course, will stream the fights, disrupting the market so hard, that HBO, known for broadcasting the major boxing events in the last 45 years, has quit the boxing business after DAZN’s announcement.

And it doesn’t stop here, for the fight between Canelo and Rocky Fielding, DAZN produced its first episodic program, CANELO vs ROCKY, showing the behind the scenes of both boxers training for the event. The show was also aired on DAZN’s platform, Youtube and some mainstream TV networks.

As you can see, there was a lot of money invested here before the platform was released. Most came from Leonard Blabatnik, the Chairman of Access Industries, who owns Perform Group, who owns DAZN. Blabatnik is the 48th wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $20.2 billion. Most of his fortune comes from the petrochemicals and oil industries.

The platform fee is $9.99 per month, with a free one-month trial, of course, and you need to be located in the countries we mentioned before to enjoy the content, that changes depending on where you are.

DAZN has gotten mixed reviews from magazines and blogs, and reading some comments and opinions from users, they don’t seem to be so happy with the streaming and the service in general, customer service included, it’s quite easy to find a lot of comments about the streaming problems with the NFL’s games in Canada for example.

Most of the complaints were about you cannot see anything about the match before the kick-off, the audio use to fail and the lowest resolution quality is terrible.

There is a twitter account called @DAZNSucks, where users use to complain about the service and upload videos about the platform’s fails, like screens with the spinning wheel or frozen screens during the stream.

On the other side, all of us know that an unsatisfied customer is more prone to write a bad review than a satisfied one gives a good review.

Anyway, if you're considering joining, it would be smart to take a look at the reviews by yourself and test the service thoroughly during the trial, so you can be sure if it worths when you pay.

DAZN is supposed to work on multiple devices, from laptops or computers to video game consoles, tablets and smartphones as well. The app works for Android and iOS.

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