Our Take on Deezer and DAZN’s multi-market partnership for sports streaming and Serie A’s decision to offset its UK shortfall by experimenting with OneFootball
September’s Sports Tech Round-Up is here!
In this edition, we take a close look at two notable developments across the sport and entertainment industry.
We provide our take on DAZN and Deezer’s recent multi-market partnership to scale sports and music streaming across Europe.
Up next, we dive into Serie A’s decision to go D2C in the UK with its partnership with OneFootball and what it means for sports broadcasting.
Deezer and DAZN team up to offer premium music and sports streaming experiences in multi-market partnership
Beginning in France, Deezer and DAZN will offer fans on both platforms access to seamless streaming with world-class music experiences and premium sports content including Ligue 1 McDonald’s football
🔎 Our Take:
Innovation in Interactivity: Are Music and Sports a Premium Combination?
The partnership between Deezer and DAZN is interesting as it blends two of the world's most passion-driven entertainment sectors. With some of the largest and most engaged audiences globally, the convergence of music and sports has long been a certainty that relies on a sound commercial model. This partnership, which offers cross-promotional premium access between platforms, will stand to unlock synergies by tapping into overlapping fan bases.
The initial rollout in France, where 56% of music fans also identify as sports fans, is a smart move. This follows the broader European trend of combining and leveraging music and sports fandom, particularly among younger demographics. Spotify’s disruptive sponsorship deal with FC Barcelona two years ago set a precedent for such collaborations. Spotify's activations - leveraging music artists, albums, and soundtracks to amplify matchday experiences—have shown that a nuanced combination of these 2 entertainment verticals can deepen engagement and generate tangible returns for both entities (and other commercial partners).
For DAZN, this partnership builds on its recent acquisition of French Ligue 1 media rights. While the primary aim is to drive more subscriptions, the tie-up with Deezer extends DAZN’s visibility beyond France, reaching wider European markets such as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. By doing so, this partnership has the potential to bolster DAZN’s brand, boost the league’s international profile, and create unique touchpoints for new fans through cross-platform activations.
With a shared emphasis on deepening loyalty and enhancing engagement amongst fans, this partnership could pave the way for more crossovers between music and sports. Our Chief Strategy Officer, JB Alliot commented, "Given the timing and context of such an agreement, it seems clear that a part of DAZN's strategy is to drive subscriptions to watch Ligue 1, as they just acquired the media rights to the competition. This can be a good and easy quick win to drive customer acquisition on both ends. Nonetheless, in the long-term, sports should definitely learn from what music has gone through over the past 20 years and prepare for a new business model to emerge, with the likes of DAZN as counterparts of what Deezer and Spotify have become in the music sector.
Serie A seeks to offset UK shortfall in OneFootball experiment
Serie A’s rights fee with TNT Sports in the UK has been reduced by roughly half, but Italy’s top-tier league is looking to bridge the revenue gap as much as it can with a pay-per-view agreement with OneFootball.
🔎 Our Take:
With traditional media rights models facing stagnation, it's no surprise that top-tier leagues like Serie A are prioritising the mitigation of immediate revenue shortfalls. However, the long-term potential lies in moving beyond established broadcast partnerships by adopting a more diversified media rights approach.
This allows rightsholders to reduce their reliance on traditional partners while exploring new channels for fan engagement and monetisation.Serie A’s recent pay-per-view deal with OneFootball in a complex market like the U.K. is a step in this direction, offering a foothold in the direct-to-consumer (D2C) space without the heavy investment required to launch a standalone platform.
The partnership also enables Serie A to gain a deeper understanding of its fanbase through direct audience interaction while giving OneFootball an opportunity to expand its content portfolio alongside existing offerings such as Sky Deutschland, DAZN, and Deutsche Fußball-Bund.After all, going D2C is certainly an experiment for most rights holders. For Serie A, it's a positive one to reimagine its media strategies.
By retaining more control over their core product and emphasising collaborative partnerships with OTT platforms, leagues like Serie A can explore hybrid models that blend D2C capabilities with traditional broadcasting, ultimately unlocking new revenue streams and enhancing audience engagement. While it remains to be seen how practical this approach will be, it’s clear that bridging immediate financial gaps is only the first step. Strategic control over content distribution and audience engagement will be key to ensuring sustainable growth and a more sound media rights strategy for the future.
Commenting on the news, our CBO, Leander Monbaliu, said, "Certainly, this move is instigated by a lack of interest from traditional players in the U.K. market. Nevertheless, it clearly fits in the strategy of Serie A to build more direct relationships and gather important market intelligence around its media product."
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