Comments Thread For: What's Happening With DAZN? - Part One

[Fanofreason]

Sorry but Wilder Ortiz was a bust. The factual numbers are 5 million to Wilder and 1.5 Ortiz. The venue sold 60% capacity and tickets were discounted. It takes 350,000 PPV sales to cover Wilder's 5 million. Unless you're willing to make up numbers the math simply isn't there, sorry.

The cable companies take $5 an order not 40% morons

[Citizen Koba]

You do realize they NEED millions in the United States. Most of their money is tied up in deals with boxers pertaining to the United States.

Those outside of the U.S. numbers mean nothing. They had millions of foreign subs before they came to the United States.

I guess you missed the report late last year, also in WSJ, where it was stated that DAZN loses money in every single market - except Japan.

There are countless articles right now, where DAZN admits on the record they are trying to raise more money right as we speak, 500 million to 1 billion. When a company is trying to raise more money, that could be a very bad sign - if they are unable to secure that money from investors. If they are unable to secure those funds, how much longer do you expect them to be around.... at least in the states?

It could be a sign that they are failing but not necessarily I would say. Many innovative start-ups have a bumpy road to success. My inclination is watch this space, if they don't give folk in the US market the fights they want and continue overpaying they will fail, if they find a way to start cutting purses and increasing subs they'll be around longer.

I recall folk levelling the same kinda criticisms at PBC but they seem to at least be holding their ground or making some progress, although my sense is that perhaps DAZN and MatchUS are facing much stronger resistance and are suffering from being the outsiders coming into an established market.

Ultimately I think it's virtually inevitable that streaming services will come to dominate not just boxing but all sports though whether DAZN will ultimately became a failed experiment on the way there or a market leader will ultimately be decided by the markets I guess, though it's my sense that the existing US boxing community won't hesitate to use every means at their disposal - including sites such as this one or indeed respected journalists like Hauser - in an effort to ensure that they keep their market share.

Meh. It'll all shake out in the end. Free market capitalism might not be much good at solving the worlds woes but it is pretty damn good at figuring out what paying customers want.

[siablo14]

What do you mean they mean nothing? 7 mil subs outside the US mean nothing? You do know their cards are shown in all countries with their apps right, so why does only the US count? I said they were on the right track by doubling their sub base in 6 months. Even the biggest companies have debts and look for investors. Netflix just increased there from 12 billion to 15 billion.

They have the rights for Premier League in Canada.

[Input1914]

We've already seen this story with PBC. They start off high and then fall apart the only difference is that PBC rarely gave us competitive matchups as consistently as DAZN does. I think Hauser is overestimating the willingness of ESPN and Fox to continue to invest in boxing at a loss. As a fan, I hope DAZN continues to flourish and gets better and PBC/ESPN finds a way to offer boxing on more consistent basis with more competitive fights. The top guys are all getting older any many of them have not scratched the surface when it comes to fighting the best of their peers.

[Shadoww702]

The cable companies take $5 an order not 40% morons

How does an AP pay cable fees??

[Monty Fisto]

They have the rights for Premier League in Canada.

This is what finally pushed me into subscribing to DAZN. Before that I would just time a free trial with a big fight. Now I have an annual subscription, which gives me every premier league game and all the boxing (plus a bunch of other sports content that I don't bother with).

I thought they had a decent bunch of fights in 2019. Naturally, I hope they can improve on that in 2020. I think the article is an interesting read and reasonably objective. It's not anti-DAZN per se: it's pointing out that they have faced greater headwinds than they anticipated going in; that they made a stupid decision with one of their biggest fights (i.e. delaying the start of Canelo's LH fight); and that boxing is harder to organise than many other sports, which makes planning their business based mainly on boxing tricky. I think all of these points are clearly true.

Be interested to read part 2 of this article (and to see how DAZN fair in coming years).

[OctoberRed]

The cable companies take $5 an order not 40% morons

Are you crazy? 5 bucks? Have you lost your mind.

Why do you think the UFC went exclusive with PPV on the ESPN+ APP, they were tired of paying 40-50% of their take and the cable operators refused to budge.

This past June from Arum himself.


Arum believes the pay-per-view model will never die, but he wants to find a way to negotiate down the high percentages being taken by the cable and satellite providers - which in turn would allow the promoters and networks to cut down the price of pay-per-view.

"The pay-per-view model will never die. It's always going to be there, it's good. But maybe we can find ways to cut the price that that cable and satellite providers take, so we can cut the price down," Arum said to BoxingScene.com.

And UFC COO On Why They Left Cable/Satellite With PPV:

Why did the UFC do this?

That’s simple. Financially, it’s almost certainly a great deal for the UFC. ESPN will pay the UFC a “license fee” on the front end for the right to sell the promotion’s pay-per-view cards. And then, presumably, the UFC will still make a percentage in PPV revenue on the back end. It’s unclear what that percentage split will be between ESPN and the UFC and neither side will disclose it.

“We’re not commenting on any of the financial parts of this deal, but obviously they’re paying a license fee to us,” Epstein said.

With cable and satellite providers, the UFC reportedly got 50 percent of PPV revenue and was apparently angling for more, per reports. As recently as last month, the UFC was in dispute with DirecTV and its easy to imagine the move to ESPN+ has at least something to do with that.

Plus, the UFC gets to make ESPN its one-stop shop in the U.S. for just about all live programming, and getting even more cozy with the worldwide leader in sports is not a bad thing. For ESPN this is a no-brainer, because it gives UFC fans an even greater reason to sign up for ESPN+.

“This is just an opportunity that we just couldn’t pass up to fully align with ESPN and all the resources they have,” Epstein said. “The first 2-1/2 months, this relationship with ESPN has exceeded our expectations and I feel confident in saying it’s exceeded ESPN’s expectations. And so, we said, ‘Hey, we’re off to a great start, let’s make this thing bigger.’ It definitely wasn’t the plan, but I think just the momentum we got at the start of this relationship got us talking about this.”

[Vasyl’s dad]

A new week. A new thread by this dude about how dazn is failing. Be happy though mcc. Theres a guy out there, who, for 35+years, wrote letters and then emails, and then started threads about how HBO would one day fail at boxing. In the end, he was right. Your time is coming.

[siablo14]

This is what finally pushed me into subscribing to DAZN. Before that I would just time a free trial with a big fight. Now I have an annual subscription, which gives me every premier league game and all the boxing (plus a bunch of other sports content that I don't bother with).

I thought they had a decent bunch of fights in 2019. Naturally, I hope they can improve on that in 2020. I think the article is an interesting read and reasonably objective. It's not anti-DAZN per se: it's pointing out that they have faced greater headwinds than they anticipated going in; that they made a stupid decision with one of their biggest fights (i.e. delaying the start of Canelo's LH fight); and that boxing is harder to organise than many other sports, which makes planning their business based mainly on boxing tricky. I think all of these points are clearly true.

Be interested to read part 2 of this article (and to see how DAZN fair in coming years).

They have cricket, too?

[soul_survivor]

Thomas Hauser posts an article = automatic read. Alongside Dixon, he is probably the only credible writer on boxingscene. I can not wait for part 2.

Now, in this article, a very interesting point was raised...well two points really and something I have been posting about for year on this forum.

1. Boxing economics are skewed and fighters are being paid millions to fight scrubs/bums/chumps (use whichever phrase you like, which is damaging to the image of the sport, the image of the fighter and the interest of the fan. This type of money was once only reserved for elite v elite match ups (I have also previously used the example of Don King and Bob Arum PPVs in the 80s).

2. The over indulgence and shambolic pay structure has led to just about everything in the US boxing market being shown on PPV. That eventually killed HBO and has led to Showtime showing less and less interest in the sport.

You know the saddest part about all of this? A similar thing is happening in the UK. Years back I discussed this on a thread the problem being Sky's exclusive deal with Matchroom. I said it would cost too much to showcase too few "star" fighters, leading to everything worthwhile being on PPV and killing Sky's excellent Saturday night coverage of domestic and world title fights. There was a time when there were multiple Skysports Saturday night boxing shows a month. Up until 2016/17 it was regular to see some of the very best British fighters fight in meaningful fights, either domestic or world level. It is when we first got a taste of the likes of Bellew, Cleverly (their rematch was on PPV as times changed), Chisora, Mcdonnell, Frampton, Quigg....the lists and names and fights go on. But in the last near half a decade the shows of declined, to such an extent where there may be one Saturday Night boxing even in a span of 2 months...that too a meaningless fight.

Anything even remotely worthwhile, for example Taylor v Prograis (both quality fighters but neither a star) on PPV. BT Sports has followed in the same footsteps.

Yes AJ is now a star and recognisable all across the UK, Europe and among boxing fans in the US too BUT what about the non AJ level boxers? Who are they? Where are they? How often does the Sky subscribing customer see them ?(answer: never).

The skew in boxing economics will marginalise the sport in the UK the same way it has done in the US, so laughable in fact when Tyson Fury, so called heavyweight champion, can defend his title against the likes of Wallin and Schwarz...for millions upon millions of dollars.

What a sad state of affairs.