France, DAZN’s next step in its Western European focus

For several top European soccer leagues, the new season started last weekend. In France, this was DAZN’s debut as the main domestic broadcaster of French Ligue 1. Indeed, the UK-based broadcaster acquired rights to 8 of 9 games per matchday, starting from this 2024-2025 season. Yet, there are many reasons to think DAZN will find a hard time replicating what made its success in its other European core markets (Germany, Italy, Spain). Over the last years, DAZN has increasingly consolidated its position as the ultimate sports aggregator besides acquiring top-tier rights in its core markets. In 2024, they struck a deal with the PGA Tour, to introduce a PGA Tour Pass in MENA and Southeast Asia. DAZN had already partnered with the NFL and FIBA, to become the home of their respective NFL Game Pass and Courtside 1891 OTT platforms. Such collaboration enables rights owners to retain more control over the editorial coverage and benefit from DAZN’s established distribution channels. For DAZN, it brings the opportunity to offer an expansive library of quality content from different sports in a seamless way for the fan.  DAZN, a model for implementing new business models? As part of the deal with the PGA Tour, DAZN is also launching a dedicated FAST channel. To reach as many fans as possible, the streamer has multiplied the number of price points and business models to access its content, and FAST channels are playing a key role in this strategy. In 2023, DAZN launched 2 global FAST channels, DAZN Combat and DAZN Women’s Football, which add to other existing or newly created channels in Germany and Austria, notably in partnership with Pluto TV. 10 new channels were created in May 2024. A free tier has also been introduced at the end of last year in Germany and expanded in 2024. DAZN has also intensified its willingness to add new monetization schemes to its platform, beyond the streaming subscription model. Creative monetization models are needed: betting and merchandising are the main revenue streams identified to not rely solely on subscriptions. As part of this strategy, DAZN forged a partnership with the online sports retailer Fanatics, to offer licensed team merchandise and sports apparel directly through the DAZN app. Moreover, in September 2023, DAZN also introduced in Germany DAZN Bet, its affiliate betting product already available in the UK, Spain, and Italy." DAZN, on track to reach profitability? With preliminary results indicating over $3 billion of revenue in 2023, DAZN expects to be profitable in 2024 and has already reached profitability in some of its core markets. This is mainly due to a growth in revenues generated by subscriptions. Will the same growth be witnessed in France in the...