DAZN has had a wild ride entering into the boxing space over the past five-or-so years. Looked at first as the leader in boxing streaming content, the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench in the network's plans. Yet, despite the rough start, some of the best moments of 2023 have happened on their network as Mauricio Lara’s KO of Leigh Wood was a highlight that circulated and Luis Nery and Azat Hovhannisyan might have had the rare fight of the year bout in February, both of which aired on DAZN.
DAZN executive Joe Markowski has been making the rounds talking about a slew of issues for the network, one being the price increase, but another being that DAZN is trying to make big fights, and not just with the fighters, or promoters you’d think. To sum it up, it appears that they are looking to work with everyone.
“The vast majority of [DAZN’s] subscription base in the U.K., has been hardcore fight fans, were not just a boxing service in the U.K., you saw us announce NFL ten-year deal globally with the exception of the U.S.,” said Joe Markowski when speaking to Seconds Out at the Anthony Joshua versus Jermaine Franklin press conference nearly three weeks ago. “For us to continue serving [hardcore fight fans] with as good of a value proposition as we can, we need to continue to look at our pricing. We did, we thought let’s serve both sets of fans…will serve the loyal customer base who have shown loyalty, and are [long-time customers of DAZN we will] give them very, very good value.”
Price hikes are never fun to talk about, and when you talk about anything going up in terms of price people get squirrely quick. The fast way to not have a job is to mess up the money, and raising premiums on monthly subscription content is one way to get people’s attention in a bad way. In the United States, DAZN is now $24.99-a-month, or $249.99-a-year, which is a dramatic increase from the initial $100-a-year start they entered the market at. Add to the fact, that DAZN now is doing pay-per-views on top of their premium streaming service plan just adds to the dismay of some.
This is rather optimistic as we are approaching roughly seven to eight years in which network politics and promotional hang-ups have limited the fights that the fans could see. We rarely hear executives speak so openly, but let’s hope these words echo a sea-change of great fights in the future, as DAZN has been off to a rather hot start in 2023.
“We are open for business for anyone in boxing who wants to do business,” said Markowski. “..and we want to make great fights, that is what we are focused on.”
