DAZN accelerates into Spain

MWC19: Innovation and partnerships will be the key to DAZN’s success, says the firm’s senior vice president Peter Parmenter, who spoke at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the day before the sport streaming service launched its platform in Spain.

The sport streaming service is now available to Spanish audiences for €4.99 per month, with Spain the eighth region now served by DAZN. It is also available in Japan, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Canada, Italy, the US and Brazil where it is currently streaming on social media before launching officially in the coming months.

DAZN chief executive Simon Denyer announced the global expansion as part of its plan to continue to serve global sports fans premium pure-sport live and on-demand at a press conference in Madrid this morning where he described the launch as “the dawn of a new era for Spanish sport fans as they join the revolution of flexible, accessible and affordable sport that we are rolling out around the world”.

During the panel discussion at Mobile World Congress Parmenter said geographical expansion and OTT scalability was the firm’s “number one priority”, adding “our philosophy is to give the customers and fans choices.”

DAZN’s Spanish service will show a range of sports including MotoGP, Premier League, the FA Cup, Coppa Italia, boxing and UFC.

“What we are doing is putting the control of what you watch and what is published and broadcast into the hands of the consumer rather than pigeonholed into a channel of linear distribution from one of the big cable companies.

“The ability to aggregate multiple sports at scale at the same time concurrently is fundamental,” Parmenter added.

DAZN has been dubbed a disruptor that is breaking the traditional broadcasting model, however, Parmenter addressed its relationship with traditional broadcasters.

He said: “While we compete with Sky [in the UK], we also partner with Sky; there is a role for broadcasters but we are just doing things differently.”

DAZN also wants to look beyond live content and today announced it has commissioned its third factual series, a three-part 30 minutes series In Our Blood about Spanish MotoGP riders.

Parmenter added: “We are innovating the actual game outside the 90-minute match, we are partnering with YouTube in Brazil for example, with influencers as commentators and this resonates in that market.”

It is a model that is like that of gaming world platforms like Twitch which has also seen great success in engagement and fan loyalty.

Parmenter also spoke about the opportunities presented by DAZN’s subscription and advertising business model, with its tiered access for audiences across several devices as well as longer term plans to serve 4K content.

• Read more DAZN: The Netflix of sports?