This year has not been kind to DAZN. The OTT sports streaming service had to cut several shows and layoff many employees during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The plan though is to turn things around in time for the end of the year.
On December 1, DAZN will expand to over 200 markets across the world according to Deadline. Even better news for sports fans in markets that will have access to DAZN for the first time is the price point. The initial monthly pricing plan will cost £1.99 (about $2.59) or less.
DAZN is currently in U.S., Brazil, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Italy and Japan. The monthly cost runs between $10 and $20 depending on the market.
To celebrate the expansion, DAZN is staging two major boxing matches. On December 5, it will be Ryan Garcia vs. Luke Campbell. Anthony Joshua vs. Kubrat Pulev will follow the next week.
John Skipper, DAZN’s Executive Chairman admitted to Deadline that this was not the road map the company had in mind for growth. He did always have eyes on being a global brand though and the COVID-19 pandemic changed how those plans were put into action.
“We didn’t have live events,” he said. “We really weren’t producing anything, we weren’t marketing anything. We weren’t buying new rights. So we did have a genuine chance to stop and kind of go, ‘What’s working and not working?”
2020 will be a year that ends in stagnation for DAZN in terms of audience. The platform boasted 8 million subscribers at the end of 2019. While that number fell, it does appear that the platform is on pace to end 2020 with roughly that number of subscribers again.
