Live Events Drive Sports TV, Streaming Makes It Pay

Michael Hedges June 4, 2019 Follow on Twitter

As the merry seasons change so, too, sports. Every season has its preferred sports; indoor moves outdoor and vice versa. Every season, though, is fit for TV sports. But for sports fans there is always the next game, match, bout or race - all on TV.

Two sports events dominated the calendar this past weekend; the Liverpool FC - Tottenham Hotspur FC UEFA Champions League final and the Andy Ruiz Jr - Anthony Joshua heavyweight triple world title fight. The former was “a damp squib,” said the Guardian (June 3) and the later “one of the biggest upsets in history.” OK, sports and hyperbole go together. That’s one reason it’s really made for TV.

Both events were available to DAZN subscribers, depending on where a sports fan’s internet-enabled device is located. The All-sports subscription streaming service - pronounced Da Zone - is “the Netflix of sports,” said investor Len Blavatnik, quoted by (UK) Daily Telegraph (August 20, 2016). In five short years DAZN moved from service in Austria, Germany and Switzerland to Canada, Japan and the US to Italy and Spain. Service was recently opened for Brazil. Australia is next.

Its sine qua non is offering nine live events per day, from football (including the American version) to baseball, volleyball and rugby. DAZN dominates another sports category - combat sports, from boxing to wrestling and about anything between, like mixed martial arts. It slipped into boxing coverage as other sports networks and channels moved away, upending the pay-per-view premium sports business with an annual subscription fee.

Like Netflix it appeals to a specific set of viewers who subscribe for convenience and choice. Its baseball coverage, for example, is purely designed for Millennials; highlights, commentary and no 7th inning stretch. DAZN works on quantity.

Broadcasters, almost universally, have attached to sports as an audience and revenue builder. Radio is still there, taking advantage of that “theater of the mind.” Television came next and quickly. With cable and satellite distribution, all-sports channels appeared everywhere. Streaming opened up a whole new world.

High-speed broadband availability is a major conundrum for all streaming services. In Italy, it’s slow. “Sport is definitely an accelerator for broadband expansion that must take place across the peninsula,” said DAZN EVP Veronica Diquattro, hired away from Spotify last summer, quoted by Italian media portal quotidiano.net (June 3). “The coverage (in Italy) is still a bit like a leopard.”

A year ago Perform Group, DAZNs parent, hired ESPNs John Skipper as executive chairman. Other ESPN talent followed. Legacy US-based sports broadcaster ESPN, owned by the Walt Disney Company, has floundered in recent years, subscribers cutting the cord, followed by the company cutting staff and budgets. Its streaming service, launched about a year ago, has about one million subscribers, largely cannibalized from pay-TV subscriptions. ESPN is a mature brand and new president Jimmy Pitaro has “calmed the turbulence,” said the Los Angeles Times (May 20).

“Live sports drive people to our platform,” said DAZN director of global production Jamie Rice said to Variety (June 1), “but on the back of that push is digital programming that will drive retention. We are doing that with originals we produce for the buildup to the fight and post-fight.”

“We are just starting our journey on original programming,” he added. “When we set up in 2015 it was about live, and it still is mostly about live. That will continue to be what sports fans crave, live sports.”

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