Sports streaming service DAZN enhanced its distribution in the past year, as it now boasts 15 million paying subscribers across 225 countries and territories.
DAZN disclosed that figure, among other statistics, in its recently published 2022 annual review. The service last year added over 75 sports rights to its platform, making DAZN Europe’s largest digital sports broadcaster. The company also boasted it was the world’s highest grossing sports app in 2022, streaming 1.2 billion hours globally across 130 million connected devices.
Those 75 additional rights include domestic broadcast rights for Serie A, Bundesliga and La Liga soccer leagues, DAZN CEO Shay Segev noted in the company’s report. He also pointed to DAZN’s recent acquisition of Eleven Sports and U.S.-based Team Whistle as a driver for distribution as well as ad revenue through off-platform content.
“We have experienced healthy growth across our markets, added a significant volume of global and domestic rights to the platform, and substantially increased our revenues by adjusting our core offerings and exploring new revenue streams,” Segev stated.
DAZN reported $2.3 billion in revenue in 2022, which the company said represented over 70% year-over-year growth. But Bloomberg reported DAZN suffered $2.3 billion in losses in 2021, due to the company’s investment in acquiring Italian and German soccer rights. Soccer is particularly a popular sports streaming option, as its fan base has the highest likelihood of paying $20 per month to access all games, per Parks Associates’ latest study.
Since obtaining those soccer rights, DAZN has hiked prices in Germany, Italy as well as in Spain. According to Bloomberg’s calculations based on U.K. filings, DAZN has lost more than $6 billion since it launched in 2016. While DAZN is still aiming to become a publicly traded company, Segev told Bloomberg those plans are paused for now amid difficult global capital markets.
At this time, DAZN’s goal is to reach a profitable run-rate by the beginning of next year, said CFO Darren Waterman in the report. The company plans to further tap into the sports entertainment space, which Waterman predicts will be an addressable market of $400 billion by 2027.
Sports betting is one component of that market. DAZN late last year launched betting in the U.K., Spain and Italy and expects to add a broader set of services for customers in 2023.
“By aggregating more sports experience and services together for customers we aim to deliver more value for sports fans that we know they are willing to pay a premium for,” Waterman stated.
DAZN also wants to reel in consumers who may not want to pay so much for a sports subscription. The service this year will introduce a “freemium” model, a lower-cost tier that will give subscribers the option to make one-time purchases to access more premium content.
“This larger, lower tier customer base will be monetized by being served higher rates of advertising and a greater frequency of micro-transactions, increasing individual ARPU,” Segev stated.