Into Boxing? DAZN about to hit Australia streaming big fights to your devices

Most of this makes little or no sense to me, but I think it’s important because of what it might mean both locally and globally for sports rights.

DAZN is a sports streaming service – think Kayo, which launched in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan in 2016 followed by Canada a year later. The USA and Italy along with Spain and Brazil have followed and today the company announced expansion to more than 200 countries.

Now that sounds enormous, but its really quite easy to flick a switch and allow Aussies in rather than blocking them.

What’s important in a service like this is owning the rights to show content in those places.

While DAZN holds some very interesting sports rights globally, the launch into Australia is focussed specifically on Boxing rights and big fights like Canelo Alverez’s upcoming fight which is scheduled for May 2.

All it takes is for DAZN to sign that fight or other rights globally with no restrictions. DAZN tell EFTM they have deals with “the world’s top promotional companies including Golden Boy Promotions, Matchroom Boxing USA and GGG Promotions.”

Expect any fights they are promoting to be on the DAZN platform.

DAZN’s John Skipper says “Beginning this spring, most of the world will have access to DAZN and its unmatched schedule of boxing events,”

“Our roster of championship fighters represents some of the world’s most popular athletes and we’ll be working with them to stage spectacular international events for years to come.”

“Since our launch in 2016, we’ve seen an encouraging level of interest around our key events from both international fans and potential partners, which highlighted the opportunity to capitalize on our existing rights portfolio within boxing to fuel our expansion,” said DAZN EVP Joseph Markowski, who will oversee the global service. “Establishing DAZN as the global home of fight sports is just the first step and we couldn’t think of a better attraction for our inaugural event than Canelo’s traditional Cinco de Mayo Weekend fight.”

Pricing and actual launch date is yet to be announced, thought it must be close, accessing the website right now seems to freak it out as the site tries to work out if it should let you in:)