Global sports streaming powerhouse DAZN is ready to make its mark on the United States and is starting that push in earnest with the new FIFA Club World Cup tournament that kicks off this weekend. Expectations are high for the soccer event that DAZN’s Walker Jacobs described to StreamTV Insider as the streamer’s most ambitious US effort to-date.
The FIFA World Cup is a new tournament, featuring 32 clubs and 63 matches played over the course of a month in 12 US venues. It kicks off next Saturday, June 14 with a match featuring Lionel Messi with Inter Miami against Egypt’s Al-Ahly and concludes with the Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium on July 13, with a total $1 billion prize money pot.
Through its December deal with FIFA, DAZN, which is a major sports rights holder globally and has been dubbed the “Netflix of sports” by some, is the exclusive broadcaster of the tournament and making all matches available to stream for free globally through its platform. It’s also making certain matches available via simulcast in the US through broadcast partnerships with Warner Bros. Discovery and TelevisaUnivision.
While DAZN is a significant sports streaming player globally – available in more than 200 markets and streaming over 90,000 live events annually – it has less presence in the US. But that’s something the company wants to change and brought Jacobs, a sports and entertainment ad exec with 25 years of experience including most recently as CRO of Twitch Advertising and exec at Amazon Ads, on board to help with when he joined the company in January. Named Global CRO of DAZN Group and president of the company’s US operations, Jacobs is focused on growing DAZN’s US presence, as well as enhancing brand partnerships and advertising products – pulling experience from his time at the live streaming esports giant and prior role heading up sales and marketing for sports on Prime Video sports, including the launch of NFL Thursday Night Football.
We’re really using this as a launch pad to make our presence known [in the US]
Walker Jacobs, DAZN
StreamTV Insider sat down virtually to chat with Jacobs about all things FIFA Club World Cup and its big push for DAZN brand building in the US.
DAZN offers a paid subscription model but often makes various live sporting events available to stream at no cost for users and also recently launched a free tier.
In terms of why it was important to make the FIFA club soccer competition free to viewers globally, Jacobs noted that as a new tournament, the partners want to ensure it’s a huge success, so providing it for free helps boost excitement and make matches available to a broader audience, while also giving more people a chance to experience the streamer’s service.
“We think this is the best way to create a huge amount of excitement around it [FIFA Club World Cup] and to make it accessible,” Jacobs told StreamTV Insider. “For DAZN, this is a way to introduce really significant, large audiences to our platform… and to get more people to sample our product and experience all the things that make our product so special.”
And the company anticipates the tournament to draw a massive streaming crowd.
“Our expectation is this is going to be the most-streamed, the largest audience on a streaming event globally in history,” Jacobs said.
“We think it’s going to be hundreds of millions of viewers” worldwide over the course of the tournament, he added.
Launch pad for DAZN in the US
With games being played across multiple cities in the US, Jacobs views FIFA CWC as a “launch pad” for DAZN in the market – where main goals include introducing the DAZN name and product to the largest possible audience, attracting paid subscribers where it can, and driving ad and sponsorship revenue.
Still, as mentioned, the tournament is brand new, so just how many US fans will show up or tune in remains to be seen. Some recent reports have suggested in-person tickets for the first match up aren’t exactly selling like hot cakes in the US.
That said, similar to anticipation for robust global viewership, DAZN “expect[s] this to be a very significant event” in the US, Jacobs said.
“It’s an incredibly exciting time for soccer in the United States,” he added. “We think this tournament, bringing the top clubs in the world and the top players in the world to the United States, is going to create a tremendous amount of excitement.”
And while acknowledging that some “people are trying to figure out exactly what it is,” he predicts excitement and related viewership from fans will continuously build as the FIFA CWC competition progresses and more consumers are exposed.
“I think that when we look back at this in six weeks, we’ll have a lot to be proud of, and this will be an absolutely enormous event,” Jacobs told STV insider.
Partnering with US broadcasters
In addition to free streaming, to help make the event as big as possible in the US and bolster awareness, viewership and access to the games, DAZN brought on two broadcast partners – WBD’s TNT Sports and TelevisaUnivison.
TNT will simulcast 24 matches in English in the US, while TVU will get 18 matches, simulcast on its networks in Spanish.
The agreements go beyond airing matches, as Jacobs described the partnerships as “completely comprehensive” and end-to-end. The companies are working together on talent teams, event production, pre- and post-game shows and shoulder programming, as well as joint ad sales, and go-to-market marketing and promotions. DAZN will also be using TNT’s studio in Atlanta and TelevisaUnvision’s studio in Mexico City for studio shows.
Per Jacobs, DAZN thinks partnering with WBD and TVU will allow it to maximize both accessibility and viewership as it seeks to introduce the tournament to US fans. And it means working with two companies “that really understand American sports fans and understand how to promote these events” whilst DAZN contributes its global expertise in soccer.
Most ambitious US effort yet
With months of effort well underway, hopes are high for payoff in the US. DAZN and Jacobs recognize the FIFA Club World Cup is no small undertaking and the streamer is making a major push to use the event as a jumping off point to fuel US ambitions.
“This tournament, I don’t think it would be a stretch to say, it’s the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done in the US market,” Jacobs told StreamTV Insider. “We think it’ll bring the largest audiences to our platform that we’ve ever had, and that’s something we want to build on.”
Again, the free nature presents another opportunity for DAZN to give more people a taste of what its streaming service has to offer – including in America.
Providing free streaming access “is a really great way, I think, for us to bring DAZN to the masses and to introduce ourselves to more and more of the general marketplace, especially in the United States,” Jacobs said. “So we’re really excited about it.”
In addition to soccer, DAZN wants US audiences and brands to be exposed to its other sports offerings, such as boxing and women’s sports, as well as its reliable technology platform and fan-focused user experiences.
More sports rights and original programming are planned to be added to the service for US viewers off the back of the FIFA CWC, Jacobs affirmed.
“We’re really using this as a launch pad to make our presence known [in the US],” he commented.
DAZN could have the pockets to afford more sports programming and rights as it recently got a cash infusion under a February agreement with SURJ Sports Investment, the sports investment unit of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which reportedly ponied up $1 billion for a 10% equity stake in DAZN.
Healthy advertising demand for FIFA CWC
Of course, for Jacobs, driving ad revenue and deepening partnerships with brands and sponsors is another aim of FIFA CWC.
As DAZN ad sales teams go to market together with WBD and TVU partners, it has seen “really healthy demand and incredible interest” in the event from advertisers, per the CRO.
He cited a laundry list of verticals that have been most active, illustrating high interest across key advertising categories – including financial services and credit cards, beer, food and beverage, apparel, telco, retail, automotive, CPG, gaming and sports betting, pharma, QSR, and consumer electronics, to name more than a few.
In addition to traditional sponsorship positions and commercial break ad inventory, DAZN is integrating sponsors and placements within game time action and coverage.
For the first time in a FIFA event it’s launching two-box ads, which run when there’s a break in action, like a hydration break or substitution. It also has an enhanced clock marquee sponsorship spot, with brands appearing on screen during the action with a full logo takeover and resolve into a clock (which can be branded for two minutes at a time and rotate through the first and second half), as well as a branded ticker on the bottom announcing lineups and L-frame or squeeze-back ad formats.
“It’s going to be a ton of value for our sponsors and our advertisers that are activating with us,” Jacobs said, reiterating that it’s the biggest thing DAZN’s done in the US by a long shot. “I think that it’ll open the eyes of a lot of agencies and a lot of brands in terms of what our capabilities are.”
Enhancing the fan experience with social influencers, interactivity
DAZN also has unique fan features teed up for the soccer tournament, including through its second-screen Fan Zone experience.
Here the company is pulling in influencers and social elements to up engagement and fandom for FIFA CWC, with capabilities for chats amongst fans, polling, contests, custom emojis and more.
Jacobs (and DAZN by way of his leadership) benefits from experience at Amazon, as well as interactive live streaming giant Twitch. In the interview, he noted the FIFA CWC fan experience through DAZN’s Fan Zone “has a very similar type of feel to that type of UX” and is meant to be another way to make the product accessible and “serve fans that want to engage with other fans while they’re watching.”
Throughout the competition it’s also partnering with social platforms X and TikTok for dedicated FIFA CWC integrations and providing alternate streams and watch-alongs. DAZN’s efforts to up engagement with FIFA CWC also involve the launch of a Global Football Creator Program with over 100 soccer-focused influencers that collectively have a social following of 32 million.
A big part of the aim is for not only DAZN, but the FIFA CWC tournament itself to have a “contemporary feel” – and appeal to both younger and more tech-savvy viewers.
In addition to social elements, DAZN has viewing features planned like the launch of a new referee cam, where fans at home can see the perspective of a referee on-field.
“We’re trying to make it more social and interactive” and serve fans how they want to be served, Jacobs noted. The streamer also wants to match the vibe and pace of play on the field, he said, by deliberately picking talent and programming style that is meant to have a “young, fast, energetic feel to it.”
Notably, with DAZN’s global presence and infrastructure, the tournament will be streamed in 15 different languages across the globe. With millions of viewers expected to watch worldwide, it means a lot of pressure for DAZN’s infrastructure and technology to deliver a quality stream. But Jacobs has confidence, saying “we’ve been working for months to prepare for it.”
And with all of the effort being undertaken, the exec anticipates eventually building the FIFA Club World Cup into “one of the biggest sports events in the world” that people look forward to on a four-year cycle.
“My prediction is we’ll look back at 20 years and have a tremendous amount of pride that we were able to partner with FIFA to launch this tournament,” Jacobs said.
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