CEO of North America at DAZN Group, Joe Markowski, has defended the streaming service’s price increase that has been met with criticism from UK boxing fans.
DAZN moved from a £7.99 rolling contract offering in the UK to three structured plans for subscribers.
A single payment of £99.99 will sign a fan up for one year. If they’d like to pay that in monthly instalments it can be taken as twelve payments of £9.99. However, if they would like to dip in and out, a one-off month’s pass is now priced at £19.99.
The announcement landed in the inboxes of subscribers at the same time as the six-month boxing schedule was announced, including Anthony Joshua versus Jermaine Franklin, Leigh Wood’s title defence with Mauricio Lara, and Katie Taylor’s rematch with Amanda Serrano.
Speaking to Boxing Social, Markowski explained the pricing change was to reward loyalty.
“We want to reward the loyalty that those customers have shown, and we want to make sure we’re giving them preferential treatment when it comes to pricing. So we’ve built the annual pass and the contracting offer to serve that group of fans.”
He went on to say that the £19.99 price point – the one that has attracted the most vocal criticism – was an offering for more casual boxing viewers in the country.
“As we get into more mainstream waters, AJ being a good example, we want to make sure that we are not closing ourselves off from the more casual, flexible tourist subscriber as it were, who wants to come in and watch a big fight with his or her mates and then step away and not have an ongoing relationship with DAZN.”
“Clearly, for our business we want more of the former group of customers – the longer term, more committed, more loyal customers, but there are other types of customers in the UK we want to go after.
So we’ve done a lot of homework, a lot of analysis, we’ve looked at this and taken inspiration from other markets in which DAZN works, and we’re very confident this is the right pricing strategy.”
It’s unclear what future fights might land on the platform’s PPV model. Although Joshua’s comeback against Franklin is included in the regular subscription, it’s hard to imagine his future fights staying that way.