Will DAZN’s latest push for boxing work in the US?
This year, the boxing landscape in the US has been through some major changes as promotional companies made moves to get their events shown on various platforms. Most recently, Golden Boy Promotions renewed their contract with DAZN and Top Rank entered a new deal with the same platform. The over-the-top (OTT) streaming service also has deals with Matchroom Boxing and Queensberry Promotions who are based in the United Kingdom, with Matchroom having multiple events in the US since they partnered with DAZN in 2018. These deals signal that DAZN is fully invested in boxing, but will it result in getting more people to subscribe to it?
DAZN is a British based company that was established in 2015 after previously being under the name of Perform Group. By providing sports programming through digital means, DAZN is available in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. It can be accessed through mobile apps, smart TVs, PCs, and digital media players – giving a multitude of options for subscribers to watch their content. They have acquired media rights for various leagues in soccer, football, hockey, basketball, and other sports. As of last year, DAZN has an estimated 12 million subscribers worldwide.
Bivol vs Canelo was one of the major boxing events on DAZN in 2022. Photo by Ed Mulholland
While that figure seems like a fair number for a platform that provides sports programming, the amount of subscribers from the US is a small percentage of that. Currently it is estimated that there are less than 500,000 people that have a DAZN subscription. The platform has been available in the US for some time, but with the lack of media rights to major sports within the country and in other parts of the world DAZN has to rely on boxing to build its subscriber base.
As mentioned before, the deals that DAZN has struck with major promotional companies in boxing have led to multiple events to be broadcasted on their platform. In January, the event headlined by Teofimo Lopez and Shakur Stevenson generated good numbers and the following month DAZN had Ryan Garcia versus Mario Barrios on their platform. They will be simulcasting the boxing event headlined by David Benavidez and Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez on May 2nd, and on June 27th they will have Xander Zayas versus Jaron “Boots” Ennis exclusively on their platform. By visiting the page on DAZN a user is able to access fights that have been on their platform over the past couple of years including over 40 fight cards so far this year.
Zayas vs Ennis will be live on DAZN June 27th. Photo via Matchroom Boxing
As of this month, DAZN offers subscription packages that vary from monthly payments to yearly payments. Their standard package is 21 dollars a month or 225 dollars a year, which does not include pay-per-view events that come up at least once a month. In order to watch the pay-per-view events, DAZN offers an “ultimate” package which is 45 dollars per month or 450 dollars per year. There is an option to buy pay-per-view events individually but the value they present is to get all of those events within the ultimate package.
With media rights to events from Matchroom, Golden Boy, Top Rank, Queensberry, and potentially Premier Boxing Champions (plus many other promotional companies), subscribers will be able to watch as DAZN states “over 180 fights a year”. Despite that, the price point could be steep for people that already spend money for internet service providers plus access to other streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV, and Fubo. According to sources, DAZN is hoping to get as many as 650,000 to 700,000 subscribers in the US with the price packages they currently offer. Whether that actually comes to fruition remains to be seen.
