DAZN’s Loss Totals To Over $6 Billion Since 2016 Launch

DAZN has reportedly lost a lot of money. 

The upstart sports streaming service has apparently sustained a $1.36 billion operating loss for 2021, making the total loss $2.3 billion, according to a report published by Bloomberg on Wednesday. 

The reason? DAZN CEO Shay Segev said that it was mainly due to its $1.9 billion buy to acquire Italian and German soccer rights for Bundesliga and Serie A. 

DAZN said they made 41.56 billion in revenue in 2021 and in 2022, that reached $2.3 billion. Boxing promoters Golden Boy and Matchroom have exclusive deals with the streaming service.  

In October 2018, DAZN signed undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez to a 10-fight $350 million contract, but that ended in 2020. He became a free agent, but accepted Matchroom Eddie Hearn’s offer to face Dmitry Bivol in May and Gennadiy Golovkin in September on the streaming platform. 

Those pay-per-view events were used to generate more revenue in addition to their monthly subscription. 

Still, DAZN has reportedly lost a total of over $6 billion since it launched in 2016, according to Front Office Sports. 

“We are learning,” said DAZN’s North America CEO Joe Markowski in March.  

“And it’s why we’re not shirking away, and I’m not personally shirking away from comments we made about pay-per-view four years ago. I’m not gonna try and pretend that was just a marketing campaign, or I was just poking the bear. At the time, we genuinely believed it. We’re humble enough and honest enough to admit that we maybe, in hindsight, got that wrong. But ultimately, do we still maintain the commitment to value to our consumers? Absolutely. 

“And I’m happy to have a conversation, hand on heart, with anyone in the market about, you know, the value we offer to boxing fans relative to our competitors. We are absolutely best in class at that, and we will continue to be, despite occasionally, sparingly using pay-per-view to commercialize our fights. I’d be insincere if I said, ‘You know, we were only joking about that.’ We weren’t. We believed it at the time. 

“In 12 months, let’s look at the pay-per-view year, starting today, and looking back to 12 months of pay-per-view activity. I guarantee you, if you wanna talk about value at the end of that 12 months, see how much value has been served to boxing fans in that 12 months, we’ll be at the top of that tree.”