Global sports streaming platform DAZN has further bolstered its international leadership team by naming former Canal Plus executive Brice Daumin as chief executive of its operations in France and Switzerland.
In his new role, Daumin will oversee the broadcaster’s business across the two countries, with DAZN eager to secure domestic rights to the country’s top-tier soccer league Ligue 1 for the next 2024-25 to 2028-29 rights cycle. He will report to group chief marketing office and DACH chief executive Alice Mascia.
Daumin joins DAZN after serving 10 years as managing director of Swiss operations for pay-TV heavyweight Canal Plus from 2013 to 2023. Before that, he worked at Deutsche Telecom’s T-Online France subsidiary.
DAZN Group chief executive Shay Segev announced the appointment via LinkedIn, adding: “With over 25 years experience in the French and Swiss media and telecom industries, Brice brings extensive in-market knowledge across DAZN's strategic imperatives - customer focus, commercial development, partnerships, and distribution.
“Brice's appointment underlines our commitment to France and our growth strategy in what will become another key market for DAZN.
“As the largest sports platform in Europe by any measure, we have an amazing set of rights across Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, UK, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Portugal. Brice's joining will only help strengthen our position as the ultimate sports destination platform.”
DAZN launched in France last August via a distribution deal with Canal Plus, which saw the broadcaster’s Ligue 1 channel integrated into the DAZN app, while subscribers of Canal Plus were given access to DAZN’s linear channel for free.
Since then, the platform has secured rights in France to the UEFA Women’s Champions League, Basketball Champions League, Professional Fighters League, the Glory kickboxing series, and the domestic third-tier Championnat National soccer league.
The LFP, French soccer’s top-tier league structure, initially launched its tender process for domestic Ligue 1 rights in September but announced it would delay it and postpone the tender for second-tier Ligue 2 after its reserve prices for the competitions were not met by its October deadline.
It said it would begin private negotiations with broadcasters. Along with DAZN, other broadcasters in talks with the governing body include pay-TV broadcaster BeIN and e-commerce giant Amazon.
Rights for the current cycle are held by Amazon and Canal Plus, as well as telecoms firm Free.
Amazon pays €250 million per year to show eight matches per week, through its Prime Video streaming service, while Canal Plus pays €332 million annually for two matches. Free holds near-live rights to all 10 matches for €42 million.
However, Free’s rights package has now been scrapped and built into the other Ligue 1 options for the next cycle.
This appointment comes a week after DAZN announced Yu Sasamoto, a former senior executive at X (formerly Twitter), as chief executive of its operations in Japan to oversee the company’s operations in the market and its expansion into the Asia Pacific region.
In October, meanwhile, businessman Kenji Kitatani was appointed as the new chair of DAZN Japan.
