By Mohamed Horomtallah: Being an accountant for DAZN USA must be one of the toughest and most stressful jobs.
The streaming app hit the US market in May 2018 with General Eddie Hearn and his Matchroom troops ready for war.
He came as a conqueror with a sword-shaped checkbook and threats to put rival networks out of business, with phrases like “American networks are shaking in their boots” and “pay-per-view is dead.”
The plan was to make a hostile takeover and crush the competition. Four years later, it is clearly a failure. huge one
Hearn’s arrogance and complete lack of knowledge of the local market makes him and DAZN look like newbies.
The first red flag should have been his failure to attract PBC fighters despite offering larger purses.
They then signed Canelo to a $365 million contract and combined it with a $100 million deal with Golovkin.
They never put clear language in those contracts to ensure a good level of opposition for both fighters, nor did they read the fine print.
Canelo walked out of his contract and returned as a free agent, earning twice what he was being paid per fight, while Golovkin was cashing a $15 million check against Steve Rolls!
Meanwhile, the app kept making fishy moves along the way, like paying Mikey Garcia 7 million purses for regular Showtime-type fights, and failing to get Jaime Munguia or Ryan Garcia to face a relegation fighter.
Fast-forward to last Saturday night and DAZN’s much-desired and highly-anticipated fight: Canelo vs. Golovkin, part three!
To make their dream come true, DAZN executives paid no less than 80 million plus PPV (55 for Canelo and 25 for Golovkin) for the two fighters to get into the ring. Canelo didn’t impress, and Golovkin could have fought in a suit because he was just there to collect his last big paycheck.
I’m no expert accountant, but all signs point to PPV sales hovering around 400-500k, which is a disaster for the app.
For the sake of comparison, Canelo vs. Caleb Plant made over 800,000 pay-per-view purchases.
Adding insult to injury, DAZN recently signed Anthony Joshua to a $100 million deal, and he just lost in a row to Oleksandr Usyk, and if he and Tyson Fury fight later this year, BT Sports will be in the seat. of the driver. In other words, AJ’s value is rapidly declining and it will take a miraculous resurrection from Joshua for them to see a gain from him.
That leaves us with Canelo, but first, the DAZN board of directors must ask themselves a question: are we willing to continue paying Canelo 40-50 million bags for soft touches and, aside from a Bivol rematch, who can we match him with? excite the fans?
Last time I checked, David Benavidez and Jermall Charlo were on PBC, and they’ll both make over a million buys against Canelo.
Meanwhile, DAZN is staying on the outside looking in and they won’t even have a say in Gervonta Davis vs. Ryan Garcia, should it happen, at least not in the first fight.
When all is said and done, Eddie Hearn single-handedly brought DAZN to its knees.
If it had been a little more humble and acted like a business partner instead of a conqueror, things could have been different and DAZN could have had a functional and mutually beneficial partnership with other networks.
Eddie Hearn’s case is like a rich kid whose parents bought him a supercar, and he pulled over professional drivers and warned them there was a new sheriff in town.
Years from now, someone at DAZN will sit in a chair and reflect on what happened and wonder: was it worth it?
