No but Matchroom were a loss leader to get a foot hold in a market. If they no longer want that market. Matchroom USA is redundant?
The whole project is a failure, they've got no rights to any big domestic sport in any country where it matters, ie they have NFL I think but In Canada
Well they’ve got Bundesliga in Germany and Serie A in Italy, plus the Champions League in a few places, but those are in markets where they were established before launching in the States. I think by now they were intending on challenging for some of the ‘big 4’ sports rights in the States, but the NFL, MLB and NHL have all negotiated fresh long-term deals elsewhere, and the NBA is likely to do so. Truth is they were never even remotely in the hunt for those rights. I think they’d have quite fancied the NFL Sunday Ticket package, which is for all the out-of-market games on a Sunday and would’ve worked well on a platform like DAZN, but those are likely to go to Amazon, and DAZN have barely up in conversations around it.
If they are pulling out of the US, then surely Eddie's budget for Matchroom US will be hugely reduced?
It’s so weird they didn’t wait until these announcements (Whyte vs Wallin, Chisora vs Parker and Garcia vs Martin) before raising the price in the UK. Looks quite amateurish for me, but what do I know…
DAZN will essentially be prioirtising the rest of the world as opposed the specifically the US. The company is so strong on data and strategy. when they entered the US they did anticipate taking one of the big sports rights. However many of the existing providers put pressure on the leagues and made that difficult. They will still have a US boxing strategy but it will be reduced and focus on global viewers instead. For instance you will likely see Canelo fight in Asia sometime soon. Plus DAZN and Matchroom will be entering 4/5 markets over the next 18 months including. Australia, Japan, Germany. The plan is to keep a foothold in the US but come back to the market when it’s a global force that can blow existing subscribers out the water
In all seriousness, I don’t see what’s game changed so far and why Hearn keeps saying he couldn’t make these fights on Sky... Fight camp - last years on Sky was much better Lara v Warrington - the first one was on non-PPV Sky Smith v Fowler - 2 years ago Smith fought Eggington with Fitz v Fowler chief support on non-PPV Sky Chisora v Parker - 2 years ago this was supposed to be on the undercard of a Sky card and Chisora has lost 2 out of 3 since Whyte v Wallin - bang average. Hearn has slated Wallin plenty of times.
The issue I have with DAZN is the price- you are paying £8 a month for effectively a couple of decent ish boxing cards. That’s too much. They need to add more sports or have a rethink.
Got another DAZN UK survey this week - the unsubscribe version. Gave the feedback as follows: 1. £7.99 is far too high for one UK card per month without any Box Office fights such as Fury v Wilder, Joshua v Usyk etc 2. Minor sports such as women's football has zero impact on decision. 3. The frequency and quality of fights needs seriously stepped up. 4. People already have Amazon and Netflix so all the additional content (eg documentaries) is pointless. 5. Looks like the streaming version of Boxnation but that channel had more and better fights when it started. 6. The Usyk v Joshua fight not shown on DAZN UK was the final straw. 7. Unlikely to subscribe in the future at the current price and live boxing schedule. They may or may not act on the feedback but I could be convinced to re-subscribe at the right price and better quality of fights.
Well he managed to land Demetrius Andrade, who Eddie still can't land a big fight for after about 3 years, as well as the fact that no one could care less about him and big fighters don't want a bar of him. Think I saw somewhere that Jason Quigley was getting lined up for him which says it all about Andrade haha.
