People forgetting that UK cards are a side line now for Hearn. He is about to put on Canelo - Bivol and Canelo - GGG 3 easily the two biggest fights announced this year to date.
And look at how they turned out. Winning sports rights is pointless if you can't afford it. Setanta started super small and had a nice business that grew massively but then they decided to try and go toe to toe with sky. Launching SSN rival was beyond stupid.
The difference is Setanta never had the money for the rights they were acquiring. It was being financed by hoping more subscriptions would arise. If DAZN was a new startup he wouldn't have gone with them. The risk would have been too high.
Which emphasizes the point I was making even more that DAZN are not guaranteed to land the major rights they want. You agreed with my argument by trying to argue against it. In regards to ESPN. All I was saying was they unexpectedly walked away. I believe DAZN could do the same in the UK if they fail to land non boxing sports rights. You can also add in the US market within 5 years the way things are going over there. If they fail to land the NBA or NFL when they next go to tender then not sure how anyone can be so sure they stick around. John Skipper was totally correct when he talked about the importance of these rights. And if you look at each market DAZN are in around the world they have already started to scale back on some and be more aggressive elsewhere. So like I said before, if they continue to not win any sports rights here in the UK I am not confident they stick around for the next 5 years. I am not saying they will fail but at the same time I think my view is pretty reasonable and objective. I am waiting for DAZN UK to start adding content. Pretty sure others are doing the same. How long you gonna give them a free pass. Another two years?
Setanta had the finance but its investors stopped injecting funds when seeing bad results continually. Mad thing is that Len Blavatnik was close to rescuing Setanta but talks collapsed.
What rights? The rights they've need are those that drive subscriptions. How many of those have gone to tender since they launched in the UK? Champions league? As we saw BT paid way over the odds for that. Buying rights at the wrong price will add subscribers but the end result is a loss so its not just about getting sports rights, it still has make economical sense. BT were looking to exit the business simply because these rights do not guarantee profits when they are paying so much to aquire to them. Premier league hasn't gone to tender. As I said they can wait it out if they only need a tiny amount of subscribers until the next stage of tender. We know they were due to bid for epl but never had the chance so now they wait it out. Now of course they could exit the UK if they cant win those key rights but for now they only have the option to wait it out. Its no free pass its just the state of the market. ESPN exited because the rights for the EPL were simply going too high and were not prepared to play the sum loss game of aquring rights and then suffering huge losses. The cost of live Premier League games grew 70% when espn lost the rights.. Disney could afford to pay but wouldn't as it didn't make financial sense. As we saw with the latest epl deal and German and Spanish TV deals the market is seeing a correction and the bubble is no longer growing at an unrealistic pace so if anything they are entering at the right time where these rights become much more economical viable rather than making a huge splash for brand recognition but it doesn't actually make any money.
You are wrong about ESPN. ESPN left because BT sport out of nowhere entered the market and managed to nail 2nd pick Premier League rights. Without football ESPN realised it would struggle to keep hold of its subscribe base. Literally months before ESPN left they were talking about expanding and being more aggressive when going for more live sports. Just shows how quickly things can change. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/may/02/fa-cup-espn-premier-league?INTCMP=SRCH So at the moment DAZN UK is the new boxnation. No idea how you grow the userbase with just that on offer. Imagine being boxnation for all that time and they still end up not winning some kind of premier League rights. And remember it's DAZN who are saying in interviews that they are looking to expand in the UK. I don't think a boxnation 2.0 is part of the plan.
Yes but you can only expand when rights are avaliable. They can't aquire rights that are not avaliable. Unlike box nation they don't need to grow subs ASAP. More concerning would be if they started to lose the userbase they have now. B They are not box nation as box nation were running a business that was reliant on hitting subscription numbers. DAZN UK if just part of a global business where they are not reliant on subs to keep the lights on. On espn yes bt won the rights but that's the point they lost the bid as the rights were sold for 70% more than the what was paid previously. They didn't expect there bid to lose. What they didn't expect was rights to increase by 70%. They didn't stick around for the next tender when the bubble was growing at such a insane rate.
Matchroom could go completely under, Eddie would still land on his feet. He's set for life regardless of what happens from now on
