#3: Women's Sports - To the moon?
DAZN has acquired official rights for the UEFA Women's Champions League. Women's sports are gaining traction, especially football. But here's why DAZN can catalyse that process.
Note: The terms ‘Soccer’ and ‘Football’ will be used interchangeably.
Sports streaming platform DAZN recently acquired the streaming rights and the broadcaster responsibilities for the UEFA Women’s Champions League matches for the next 4 seasons (from 2021 to 2025). To make things even better, DAZN has also partnered with YouTube. For the first 2 seasons (that is 2021 and 2022), all 61 matches will be free to watch on DAZN’s dedicated YouTube Channel for the tournament by the name UEFA Women’s Champions League, apart from DAZN’s own OTT platform. From 2023-2025, only 19 matches will be available on YouTube. Surely, there will be some loss in the potential revenue for DAZN giving away their content for free like that, but definitely, the one that has the potential to pay off big time.
SOME BASIC BACKGROUND:
About DAZN:
DAZN is a sports streaming platform founded in 2015. In December 2020, it expanded its presence in 200+ countries. While DAZN has a wide range of sports, it is best known for its world-class Boxing and MMA content. Over time, DAZN will surely look to expand the portfolio of sports available on the platform. And, that is the need of the hour, for anyone who wants to become the self-proclaimed “Netflix of Sports”, as aspired by the billionaire backer of DAZN, Len Blavatnik. This how big DAZN is actually in case you didn’t know:
DAZN was valued at $3 billion in 2018.
Viewing time: 2018: 256 million hours
2019: 507 million hours
By the end of 2019, DAZN had 8 million+ subscribers.
Revenue in 2019: $878 million, up by 76% over the previous year’s $497.8 million.
The craziest number: In 2019, DAZN’s advertisement income was $100 million+. DAZN crossed this mark for the first time in 2019.
And, of course, DAZN bore the brunt of the pandemic when all of the sports were shut down. But, we can be hopeful of DAZN due to its rising subscriber count and revenues.
About WOMEN’s FOOTBALL and Women’s Sports:
Well, it may not seem so as of now, but according to a report by Deloitte, the future is bright for global women’s sports in terms of commerce. And, that gets brighter when we talk about the most popular sport in the world - Football. Women’s football is not doing bad even in the present time. It is quite popular and is only expected to grow from here. And the ability of women’s sports events to draw large audiences both on the venue and on television/OTTs is also rising.
To quote an example here, FIFA Women’s World Cup 1999 finals was attended by 90,185 people. But it is a two-decade-old record and hasn’t been broken yet. However, here’s a good sign: ICC Women’s T20 finals in 2020 came pretty close by clocking in a staggering 86,174 attendees. This was a recent example of the fact that women’s events can draw huge crowds, and it is not 1999. So, the optimism for growth in women’s sports looks very reasonable.
The Deloitte report gives some other optimistic insights too regarding women’s sports and football in particular:
It was in 1900, that women first participated in Olympics. Women made up 22 of the 997 athletes. Cut to today, since 2012, American and Canadian Olympics Teams have included more women than men.
Tennis as a sport does best setting the example of equality between men and women — both on and off the field. Tournaments offer equal prize money to men’s and women’s winners and marketers rope in both men and women athletes. One obvious example is Naomi Osaka, the upcoming superstar tennis player, who was ranked 12th on the Forbes’ list of highest-earning athletes. She earned $60 million in the past year, $55 million coming from endorsements and partnerships. She earned more than global star athletes such as Tiger Woods, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Mohamed Salah, Robert Lewandowski, Max Verstappen, Canelo Alvarez and many others. Also, in the USA, women’s tennis enjoyed a slightly higher TV rating than of men’s
FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019 was watched by 993 million people on TV and 482 million on digital platforms. Finals were watched by 260 million people, with 14.3 million of them in the USA. And yes, there may be a case for accounting the big viewership to football-the sport rather than to women. So, let me tell you, the women’s FIFA world cup final in 2019 drew 22% more viewership in the USA than the FIFA men’s World Cup in 2018. Plus, America is not even a soccer-heavy nation. All of this strongly signals that people are supporting women’s football and women’s sports in general, more than ever.
The first 12 matches of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup generated 41 million hours in India, a cricket heavy nation, but now the popularity of women’s cricket has started to grow at exponential rates. Another good sign.
The 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup was watched by 2.6 million people in the UK.
Sure these might be signs of people taking a genuine interest in women’s sports, but the people responsible for the development of women’s sports should not relax and get complacent just as yet. There are still a lot of gaps to be filled in a lot of areas such as marketing, coverage, distribution, creating new fans and many others.
WHY DAZN and WHAT does it do right :
This is what Norm Lem, the senior vice president of revenue at DAZN Canada, has said regarding the UEFA deal:
… It’s ultimately the storytelling that we love as a broadcaster and our ability to sort of get behind the scenes and really shine a light on these world-class athletes. Perhaps they may not have gotten the opportunity to have that light shone on them before.
That is the part that brings out the most optimism about women’s football. DAZN has some of the best content on combat sports, showing both ins and outs of the ring. It has some good matches all right, but their documentaries and behind-the-scenes content is what makes them special and right for the job. As Lem said, DAZN plans to do the same with football too.
Here’s my opinion:
Documenting, story-telling, behind-the-scenes, showcasing the personalities of athletes/organisations, are some of the must-dos to make non-fans/casual-fans/passive-fans a dedicated fan of any sport. And I think DAZN believes the same. By just broadcasting a particular sport, one may be serving the interests of existing fans. But, taking non-fans to the unexplored side of things, telling stories, is when non-fans form a bond with any sport. That is when and how fans are made.
Two obvious examples:
Netflix’ Drive to Survive: It is majorly responsible for the recent surge in the popularity of Formula One. For example, UK’s Sky Sports recorded 2.23 million viewers for Bahrain Grand Prix 2021, the highest ever on its channel for any Grand Prix. Formula One audience between the ages of 16-35 has also grown substantially since the debut of Drive to Survive.
UFC’s The Ultimate Fighter did the same for UFC. Before this show, UFC was infamous for its violent nature, and was not very respected either. In 2004, UFC came out with The Ultimate Fighter, showcasing some of the most personal parts of fighters’ lives and backstage moments. It told the story of fighters, how they have to fight and fight skillfully to earn the prized UFC contract which would enable them to feed their families. All of this was presented in the most honest form of storytelling. It resonated with people, people connected, tried to watch the sport, loved it and that is how UFC started to grow and fighters started getting respect, respect as human beings more importantly.
That is what DAZN is looking to do as well with women’s football. Women’s football is in very safe hands for the next 4 years. DAZN will be instrumental in its growth.
Here’s my opinion on what sports broadcasters should do:
To grow any sport, a fair amount of coverage is a prerequisite. In addition to those, other auxiliaries such as live coverage, solid pre-game and post-game shows, expert reviews, analysis shows, prediction shows, documentary shows showcasing the personalities, regional commentary etc. and all things that disseminate the knowledge of the game and the athletes to the audience should be produced. Taking the example of here in India, Indian broadcasters have long done all of the above mentioned - with cricket, and they still do. The result is evident, the craze of cricket in India is second to none. But, that is just one sport. High time, this be done with all other sports - for both men and women to the extent possible.
For all the sports broadcasting giants, the DAZN-way may well be a lesson for them on how to grow not only women’s sports but also lesser-known emerging sports. Running 8 channels, with 4 of them showing the same cricket match simultaneously and analysis shows on others isn’t going to cut it, if the aim is to develop other sports. But doing the same for other sports also might do the trick.
At the end of the day, it is in the best interest of broadcasters to make any sport popular. More popularity equals more revenue, both for the sports and the broadcasters.
Until then, let’s hope for the time where women’s and emerging sports leagues would be bringing in $1 billion+ in revenues.
That is all from my side for today. I would love to have your views and opinions about the same. You can share them with me via E-mail or just comment it down below. If you found this interesting, do share this newsletter with others.
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