It's nice that they already have the 3 biggest star in boxing and many other fighters, but they already spent a fortune. Who is the owner and how can they afford all of this?
Whoever it is will drop boxing when they realize that the fans will never pay what the boxers want to earn. HBO learned this.
Owned by Len Blavatnik net worth $21.2 billion as of Jan 2018. Access industries is his American based company that owns the Perform Group which owns DAZN, with has business interests in numerous industries. Suffice to say while they have spent a lot so far, this isn't really a significant amount when you look into what they have money invested in. They do billion dollar deals all the time it seems, DAZN is just a small part of their business as a whole.
Dazn wont be a player in america until they get other sports. They'd have Been better Off leading with soccer in the USA and we know how little americans care for footie.
They move into boxing simply because I think they thought it was an easier market to get a foot hold in and they didn't have to wait for existing deals to expire to make a bid for contracts due to the fractured nature of boxing as a sport. They will no doubt try and move into major sports in the US, problem there is the competition will be stiffer which of course means more money having to be invested. And if they do purchase the rights to other sports they have to ensure what they are producing is of a good quality if they are to make their money back. Look at what Amazon did to the coverage of the US Tennis Open in the UK, they got ripped to shreds for their poor coverage. Buying the rights is only half of it you need to make content people actually want to watch.
Floyd was profitable for them. The other boxers probably demanded higher purses due to looking at Floyd's appeal and inflated their own self worth. HBO retaliated and folded a few years later. For Showtime it seems to be working because their marketing is much superior.
Their approach makes commercial sense. You don't launch a live streaming service instantly. It takes time to build the infrastructure and skills required. Any digital service that needs to cope with sudden massive spikes in demand takes time to bed in. They'll cut their teeth on boxing, look to build a core audience and then go for other sports as the licences come up, most of them are on centralised deals so it's not as easy a market to enter as boxing.
This. Great research. Len Blavatnik and his partners are extremely loaded, since a couple years ago they closed a $55 billion deal with Putin and got a 50% cut. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/mar/21/rosneft-takes-over-tnk-bp If DAZN fails it won't be due to a lack of money.
I think people vastly overestimate how much money DAZN has spent so far on boxing. The WBSS cards aren't a huge expense for DAZN. The Matchroom shows in the US to date have been relatively cheap, Saunders - Andrade would have been the only real expensive one if Saunders hadn't been popped. The biggest spend so far was $15m to Canelo for his DAZN debut against Fielding. The big spending doesn't start until May and June for Canelo- Jacobs and Joshua - Miller. Two fights which will increase subscribers.
HBO never learned it. They spent fortunes on complete mismatches. And they did it til the end. SHO is still doing it. Hopefully DAZN will be a lot smarter about their spending. Tevin Farmer should not become a millionaire fighting the guys he is fighting.
I think Promoters and managers are being greedy taking too much from their fighters also. The fact that a 100k purse will end up being 40k take home pay for a lot of fighters is crazy. (after trainers, managers, promoters are all paid)
People on this site seem to think there is a billion dollar upfront investment sitting somewhere just waiting to be spent no matter what. I’m sure if you looked at their financial forecast you’d see that they predict a certain amount of earnings by certain times. If they don’t make those earnings, you can be sure the investors won’t continue to throw good money after bad.
