International sports streaming service DAZN has announced details of its soon-to-be-launched free tier that will see a range of its live content made available without a subscription.
Each week, a selection of live matches from DAZN’s portfolio of rights will be made available for free to registered users on the DAZN platform and partner channels, including top-tier domestic soccer leagues in Japan (J.League), Spain (LaLIga) and (Italy Serie A), pan-European soccer’s UEFA Women’s Champions League, American football’s NFL, the Professional Fighters League mixed martial arts promotion and boxing events.
Registered users will also gain access to non-live content including documentaries and highlights, as well as DAZN’s integrated products and services such as news, data, and statistics, free-top-play games and quizzes, betting, and podcasts.
The freemium service will be launched in Germany by the end of this month before launching globally in early 2024, with the service hoping to capture new subscribers on the back of trying out the free service.
DAZN Group chief executive Shay Segev said: “DAZN wants to create as many touch points as possible for the 3.5 billion sports fans around the world.
“We know there are already 300 million people who interact with DAZN content annually, but we want ALL sports fans to join DAZN and enjoy sport.
“With our comprehensive flywheel of sports-related products and services – from tickets and merchandise to betting and gaming. Our aim is to become the go-to sports destination platform for all sports fans in all countries – thereby delivering the best proposition for rights holders and the best app for fans.”
DAZN first unveiled its plans to use Germany as a test market for its freemium tier earlier this month during a conference but announced the details yesterday (December 11). The company previously launched its first ever free ad-supported television (FAST) channel in Germany last year and trialed other monetization options in the country, including pay-per-view.
At the time, Alice Mascia, DAZN’s chief executive in the DACH region, said: “We say in the industry [that] if it works in Germany, it works everywhere, We have been using Germany as a test market for a lot of our direct-to-consumer strategies.
“The way I look at it is broader content monetization, a little bit less traditional than just a pay subscription as we started the business originally, or as other competitors that are a little bit more established than us like Sky [Deutschland] will do.
“We have changed and improved the way we were monetizing from a subscription perspective, as our rights portfolio has significantly improved over time. But we have also introduced different packages to reflect a different willingness to pay, different interests, and, at the same time, also a different value of the rights.”
Meanwhile, it has been reported DAZN is exploring ways to raise funding to accelerate its global expansion.
Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg said the company, which is backed by billionaire Len Blavatnik, has held early talks with potential advisors about raising as much as $1 billion in capital in the coming months to fund its efforts to secure more top-tier streaming rights.
The news outlet said deliberations are ongoing and the company has not decided on the structure and other details of any funding.
So far, the company has reported yearly losses after investing billions to secure premium sports rights, including top-tier soccer leagues. DAZN is due to publish its 2023 results in the coming week showing narrowing losses.
