A study from Ampere Analysis has highlighted how a successful media rights strategy has fuelled continued growth for DAZN in Spain, seeing it soar to the tenth most-watched service in the country with a 38% share of the local sports media rights market.
Spain represents the sports streaming service’s second largest investment location after Italy and in 2022 it acquired co-exclusive rights to air LaLiga games for an estimated €456 million per season alongside Telefónica-owned pay-TV incumbent, Movistar Plus. This complemented a portfolio that includes the English Premier League and premium motor racing events, Formula 1 and MotoGP, to drive viewership.
Excluding social media services, Ampere calculated that DAZN was actually the fifth most-watched service in Spain, behind only the three leading SVOD services and Movistar’s TV Everywhere service, and marginally ahead of national broadcaster RTVE’s free-to-access streaming offer. The analyst regards the achievement as particularly noteworthy considering that DAZN is pay-to-access and a sport-specialist platform, which it said naturally limits its breadth of appeal compared to services that offer wider entertainment content.
Demographically, DAZN’s viewership skews younger than six of the other top 10 services, including the SVOD giants, with 44% of monthly active users aged between 18-34. It also skews wealthier than all nine other services. Just more than half (53%) of its viewers have a household income above €30,0000, offering said Ampere, an attractive audience for advertisers. Ampere’s Sport Consumer survey also noted that DAZN viewers are more likely than the average sports fan in Spain to bet on sport, buy merchandise, and be familiar with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This bodes well for the company as it looks to diversify revenues across these spaces.
“DAZN has been the major disruptive force in the sports rights markets since it launched in 2016. As the largest sports-dedicated subscription OTT service in the world by spend, in 2022 it accounted for around half of all streaming investment in sports rights,” noted Ampere Analysis senior analyst Daniel Monaghan.
“At present its largest rights deal is in Italy, where in 2021 it acquired the exclusive rights to most of the Serie A games and co-exclusive rights to the remainder for €840m per season. In the previous rights cycle (2018-2020) it took up a smaller Serie A package, but the 2021 investment propelled it to become the largest investor in sports rights in the country, with a current market share of 57%. This strategy has seen it earn fifth-largest investor status in sports media rights globally, and helped it achieve top ranking as one of the most-used streaming video services in some of the major European markets.”
Excluding social media services, Ampere calculated that DAZN was actually the fifth most-watched service in Spain, behind only the three leading SVOD services and Movistar’s TV Everywhere service, and marginally ahead of national broadcaster RTVE’s free-to-access streaming offer. The analyst regards the achievement as particularly noteworthy considering that DAZN is pay-to-access and a sport-specialist platform, which it said naturally limits its breadth of appeal compared to services that offer wider entertainment content.
Demographically, DAZN’s viewership skews younger than six of the other top 10 services, including the SVOD giants, with 44% of monthly active users aged between 18-34. It also skews wealthier than all nine other services. Just more than half (53%) of its viewers have a household income above €30,0000, offering said Ampere, an attractive audience for advertisers. Ampere’s Sport Consumer survey also noted that DAZN viewers are more likely than the average sports fan in Spain to bet on sport, buy merchandise, and be familiar with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This bodes well for the company as it looks to diversify revenues across these spaces.
“DAZN has been the major disruptive force in the sports rights markets since it launched in 2016. As the largest sports-dedicated subscription OTT service in the world by spend, in 2022 it accounted for around half of all streaming investment in sports rights,” noted Ampere Analysis senior analyst Daniel Monaghan.
“At present its largest rights deal is in Italy, where in 2021 it acquired the exclusive rights to most of the Serie A games and co-exclusive rights to the remainder for €840m per season. In the previous rights cycle (2018-2020) it took up a smaller Serie A package, but the 2021 investment propelled it to become the largest investor in sports rights in the country, with a current market share of 57%. This strategy has seen it earn fifth-largest investor status in sports media rights globally, and helped it achieve top ranking as one of the most-used streaming video services in some of the major European markets.”
