DAZN could dominate U.S. boxing streaming, but quality control, pricing, messaging remain issues

Boxing fans in the United States felt misled the morning and afternoon of Oct. 12.

They thought their DAZN subscriptions, audaciously increased to an annual price of $225 in 2024, granted them access to the Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol undercard for no additional charge. That’s what they were quite literally told by DAZN itself when the undercard was officially announced Oct. 4.

That arrangement would’ve made an appealing afternoon of boxing even better, because as long as they also subscribed to ESPN+, they didn’t need to pay more money to watch Beterbiev vs. Bivol, the light heavyweight title unification fight the boxing world has wanted to see for several years.

Other than some toggling from one streaming service to another, this was supposed to be a rare instance in which media rights holders and promoters showed some gratitude toward the loyal supporters of this sport. The small gesture was appreciated, by adults anyway, because being a boxing fan in the U.S. has amounted to an abusive business relationship for decades.

Virtually every fight fans really want to see costs anywhere from $70 to $100. Unless, of course, industrious sorts steal the stream — something anonymous pay-per-view pirates proudly admit on social media, as if it were a legitimate entitlement.

Nevertheless, those pay-per-view main events too often don’t deliver enough entertainment value, start entirely too late on the U.S. East Coast and are generally preceded by three-fight undercards that don’t make actual paying customers feel good about their financial and time investments.

Their ire, therefore, was understandable in the U.S., especially considering the British-centric Beterbiev-Bivol undercard didn’t warrant an additional charge. The brazen nature of charging $20 for an underwhelming undercard, when you could watch Beterbiev vs. Bivol for no extra charge, was almost comical, if not for the fact it infuriated fans who felt duped.

Even worse, it was yet another infamous instance for a deep-pocketed streaming service that has had a volatile relationship with American boxing fans since it entered its most coveted market in mid-2018, screaming “death to pay-per-view,” only to start charging subscribers $79.99 for pay-per-view fights by May 2022. For whatever it’s worth, DAZN’s decision-makers recognized their messaging mistake and have promised to ensure something similar never happens again.

“We feel that during that time we were extremely clear with our communications,” Alfie Sharman, a DAZN vice president, told Uncrowned. “It was a commercial environment that we needed to navigate. Of course, there are contractual positions that we need to respect and uphold. So, we were moving kind of fluidly at pace for a major show, of course. We made it very clear on our platform how we merchandised that event. Of course, there were potentially people who felt that was not clear. What did we do, which is the most important thing? We went straight back to the way we optimized our platform user experience. If you observe our platform frequently, you’ll see that it has changed. You will see that the way we navigate our fights and the way that we navigate our communication or platform, how we articulate messaging, has changed.

“We’ve allowed for it to be a lot more immersive, a lot more engaging and a lot clearer. And that’s come from learning. That was two months ago. I’ve worked in a lot of big corporations before my time at DAZN, and with the greatest respect to those companies, who are fantastic at what they do, those changes would’ve taken a lot longer than two months. I can assure you of that. We observed that there could’ve been improvements made, and we’ve made them, and made sure that we’ve continued to follow up with value and quality, which we believe to be delivered in volume and the caliber of shows and fighters we have on our platform.”

That’s corporate speak, in case you zoned out trying to process some of Sharman’s word salad, for simply saying, “We’re sorry.”

To Sharman’s credit, mea culpas aren’t offered all that often in this brutal boxing business — not to fighters who literally risk their lives punching each other in the face, nor fans who oftentimes feel like the sport’s powerbrokers punch them in the mouth as well.

To be fair, DAZN’s executives acknowledged the absurdity of their shift to producing pay-per-view shows in 2022, when abolishing the practice was such a prominent part of the company’s initial mission statement upon signing Mexican superstar Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to what was misleadingly marketed as a 10-fight, $365 million contract once HBO announced it would stop broadcasting boxing toward the end of 2018.

“It took a period of time for the consumer to get maybe back on board with that,” Sharman said of DAZN utilizing pay-per-view as a requisite revenue stream. “But I think the only way we went about doing that, which is the right way, is just, you know, take our medicine and continue to put on fights. If you’re a boxing fan, there’s nowhere in the United States that has more boxing than us, irrespective of what our bold claims were four or five years ago. That’s just a fact.”

Another fact — DAZN has an undeniable, obvious opportunity to become the dominant streamer of boxing in the United States in 2025.

HBO stopped airing boxing after 2018. Showtime followed suit at the conclusion of 2023. ESPN, according to what several sources have told Uncrowned, will likely end its exclusive partnership with Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc. at the end of July.

If ESPN, which pays Top Rank more than $90 million annually in rights fees for fights and shoulder programming, abandons boxing, DAZN could make the inroads it sought when its ambitious American boxing project launched six and a half years ago.

DAZN’s primary problem, it seems, is that not nearly enough mainstream American sports fans know it exists. The company got off to a rocky start by confusingly calling DAZN “Da Zone.”

They also lost the services of Alvarez — the most bankable boxing star in the U.S. — then rejoined forces with the four-weight world champion, and then lost the icon again. DAZN, owned by Ukrainian-born, UK-based billionaire Len Blavatnik, has benefited, however, from its alliance with Turki Alalshikh, the Saudi fight financier who has helped make many of the higher-profile fights fans wanted to see over the past 14 months, thanks to the incomparably vast vault opened by his country’s General Entertainment Authority.

The Saudis’ extensive investment in boxing, an ambitious marketing initiative implemented in 2023 to promote tourism primarily in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, enabled DAZN to offer Saturday’s pay-per-view show headlined by the blockbuster heavyweight championship rematch between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury for $39.99 in the U.S.

A more stacked seven-fight pay-per-view event on Feb. 22, which features the Beterbiev vs. Bivol rematch, will cost only $25.99 in the U.S. Comparatively, Premier Boxing Champions upcoming pay-per-view cards that showcase the tantalizing David Benavidez vs. David Morrell light heavyweight bout (Feb. 1) and the return of popular knockout artist Gervonta “Tank” Davis (March 1) figure to cost at least $80 apiece.

Sharman and his cohorts comprehend, of course, that lowering pay-per-view prices won’t retain subscribers who want to watch boxing regularly even from month to month, let alone annually. That’s why they’ve committed to streaming “150 fight nights” again in 2025, from countries throughout the world.

“It demonstrates our commitment to the sport of boxing,” Sharman said. “Of course, we have the mega-show [Saturday] with Usyk-Fury 2, which of course we’ll make massive noise about. But it’s important to us that we don’t just show up to those major pay-per-view events and make a huge splash. It’s important that we’re merchandising clearly to boxing fans, and more importantly sports fans all over the world with the sheer volume of fights that we have and the array of talent that we want to showcase to the world of boxing.”

The entertaining welterweight battle between Alexis Rocha and Raul Curiel, which resulted in a 12-round majority draw Saturday night in Ontario, California, is just the type of compelling clash DAZN wants to typically provide hardcore boxing fans. Sharman and Co. must be more discerning, though, than paying almost $3 million for a ridiculous rematch like Jaron Ennis vs. Karen Chukhadzhian 2.

If DAZN intends to truly ingratiate itself to sometimes fickle fans of this sport, rebuffing opportunistic promoters and boxers is imperative when they try to use unscrupulous sanctioning organizations as crutches — the IBF, in the case of Ennis vs. Chukhadzhian 2, after Ennis, the unbeaten IBF welterweight champion from Philadelphia, dominated the Ukrainian contender 22 months earlier on another platform.

DAZN could’ve told Eddie Hearn, whose Matchroom Boxing promotes Ennis, that the company simply would not pay an exorbitant rights fee for an utterly unnecessary fight quite literally no one outside of the family and team of Chukhadzhian wanted to happen again.

Sharman must make use of his hammer in cases comparable to Ennis vs. Chukhadzhian 2. Otherwise, embarrassing mismatches waste basically six months of a fascinating fighter’s career, all in the name of pursuing expensive championship unification fights fans don’t necessarily want to watch either.

Boxing enthusiasts were anxious to see Ennis fight rival Vergil Ortiz Jr., a junior middleweight match Alalshikh attempted to arrange for the aforementioned February 22 card. Blame whomever you want — the bottom line is either Ennis, Hearn or both didn’t want that difficult fight next. Ortiz instead will box Uzbekistan’s Israil Madrimov in what figures to be a tough task on the Beterbiev vs. Bivol undercard.

Sharman, meanwhile, insists DAZN will do its best to deliver the types of competitive, compelling fights fans want in 2025.

“From where we started, if you fast-forward to where we are as of today, as I talk to you now, it’s candidly a night-and-day difference in terms of how we operate as a business,” said Sharman, who would neither confirm nor deny whether DAZN’s subscription price will increase next year. “Our approach to the overall sports is about volume and quality combined. Previously, we entered the market with a focus on the quality, securing the pound-for-pound great in Canelo at the time.

“I think the important point in 2025 is we’re committed and we’re already close to filling up our January and February schedule. We’re going to be delivering more than those 150 fight nights a year. So, the consumer needs to know that if you come to DAZN and you’re a boxing fan, there will be content for you to watch, and we’re getting ever close to meeting our main objective. But there’s a long way to go.”