Pay another way
PPV is dying, albeit slowly – DAZN CEO Shay Segev discusses subscription future and Netflix competition, writes Oscar Pick
WHEN DAZN entered the US boxing market back in 2018, the message was W clear: Pay-per-view is dead.
And, with that, the sport would experience a seismic shift, not least because of a $1 billion rights deal – as proudly announced by Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn at the time – but also due to the ever-changing boxing landscape which, time and again, has proven to be about as predictable as a Kinder Egg toy.
Sure enough, DAZN made a meteoric splash, becoming the troublesome ‘disrupter’ for which its bold introduction had laid the groundwork.
And yet, on the flip side, it must also be said that the streaming platform, as evidenced by a rather abrupt U-turn on its ‘pay-per-view is dead’ claims, has encountered no small amount of hurdles.
But this is where the boxing industry’s unpredictability lends itself to both success and frustration, as while a mass exodus of traditional broadcasters, particularly in the US, created more opportunities of DAZN, the new kid on the block equally discovered that, without a PPV model, its chances of becoming the ‘global home of boxing’ would be greatly reduced.