Boxing is a strange sport to invest so much in simply due to the sport being so fragmented and making fights isn't as easy as say UFC. Its not like other sports where you can set a schedule months in advance and that schedule is locked in. Ideally I think they would have liked to have gone in the direction they did with other territories where football is the core product but they couldn't do that here as the rights didn't go to tender. For whatever reason they really believe in boxing hence the AJ deal. It's difficult to explain why that is. Dazn care about subscriptions. If the US and UK markets are not getting subs from boxing they will drop it. Not sure what the plan for Australia is as the sporting landscape there is very much dominated by 3 sports. They need Cricket, AFL or Rugby League. The NRL rights are locked until 2027 so that's a no go.
New AFL rights agreement is locked in aswell, just signed a few months back, sticking with 7 and foxtel.
Plan from the off was to be a global platform. Boxing and fight sports was viewed as a low cost entry into a sport that has no limit to its fan base. NFL is US centric, football is expensive to buy individual rights in the right markets in a large scale etc. Boxing was a low cost entry sport that allowed them to build a subscriber base across the globe and build the profile of their platform and brand. It had no barriers to entry and with the right fights draw large numbers. They initially want to drive subs and then use their analytics to decide which markets view and subscribe then build on those markets. Boxing was just the sport chosen to build initial customer base Ofcourse the end game is large rights such as NFL and premier league etc but they are happy to wait it out with a solid base and iron out kinks in the platform until they become available again. They recently from what I am told have halted Italian boxing as their sub base in Australia is big and the viewers their are the third highest in the platform. So they are now going to bring boxing to that market. DAZN have seen more value in paying for big fights and larger boxing stars such as Canelo etc. this is what is driving subs for them. on a side note with Eddie he is Ofcourse in a battle as he is focusing on a global promotion rather than one market but DAZN are sooo unhappy with him they just sign AJ to a multi year £100+ million deal 2 months ago whether he beat Usyk or not. Sounds to me like they are not going anywhere
DAZN are the ones that have failed to deliver. There's only so much Matchroom can do. Most boxing fans know what DAZN is, its up to DAZN to push things on from there, which they've failed miserably at. Not delivering big sports, failing to buy BT Sports, bad advertisement, reduced budgets, the PPV debacle. Matchroom aren't responsible for these decisions and surely aren't going to be happy with how its worked out. Matchroom should be the ones looking for a way out of the deal at the earliest opportunity, not DAZN
Pretty much yes. Given Covid that was in the way. The two biggest revenue draws in boxing are Canelo and AJ both are on the platform going forward. now whether boxing is driving the subs is another matter. The platform is early days and it’s possible they Jump out of boxing if it doesn’t make sense. But for the time being they are happy enough. If injuries or cancellations didn’t happen. Hearn has the best schedule in boxing this year by far. How much more could he have done. Given the fact he is in a massively competitive market. Hearn has changed tactic he now only wants fighters or fights they feel are value. For instance he won’t pay Okolie the Sky money unless he fights in unifications or big fights. Sky have a similar UK budget to Hearn and outside of last night have provided nothing but knockovers. The strategy for them is long game as they have take the Olympians but none will be in a meaningful fight for atleast 18 months. hearn basically said to the likes of grazer Clarke take the money and build up. Once your ready come back to me and I’ll pay you big money for the big fights
Stop getting fooled by all the twitter drama at the end of the day if the fights big enough it tends to happen, Eddie hasn’t burned bridges with anyone nor has this recent debacle ended his career which people for some reason are so desperately waiting for. Promoters are all dodgy; it’s part of the job description and they’re the people who have to look bad so these boxers we idolise look great. People are stupid if they think fighters don’t care about A side vs B side or who’s name comes first etc - it’s just bad business for it to come out of the fighters mouth so they hire promoters to do that nasty stuff for them. Hearns only mistake is that he thought he could be loved as a promoter and didn’t realise that his job is to work in the shadows. When you are responsible for fights happening or not, you will not be loved. Eddie Hearn, with the full knowledge of Eubank and his promoter (who’s job is to protect their fighter too which some people forget) tried to go ahead with a fight after consulting the science with all parties happy to carry on with no formal prohibition from the governing body until the failed test was leaked. For me, this is a huge mistake, but in the cesspit that is boxing I’m sorry to say it’s a minor infringement, if there was no leak this fight would have gone ahead and no one from Eubanks side would have complained no doubt about it. For me it is no worse than Warren not paying fighters, Bob Arum jeopardising fighter careers and Don King stealing from fighters. But we know Arum, Warren and King are assholes, maybe we expected Hearn to be different.
You'd think the AJ deal might pay for itself with the right fights - 2 cheap ones and a blowout like Fury did with ESPN. Except they can thinking about it in terms of both the PPV income and the lifetime value of new subscribers, so it will be easier to bid high on AJ than other platforms might be. The flip side is, aside from locked-in deals like AJ, boxing is very easy to drop in any given territory. Trafford mentioned Italy might have bitten the dust already which is no big surprise. Sounds like Queensberry's brief flirtations with India and Poland.