Businessman-turned-radio personality, Simon Jordan, has stated his belief that sport streaming service DAZN are failing to deliver quality content to their subscribers.
Jordan made his fortune in the 1990’s, building up ‘The Pocket Phone Shop’ from scratch, before selling his business for £75 million in 2000. Jordan then ventured into the world of sport, purchasing Crystal Palace Football Club, a saga which he covered in his book ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’.
Now, Jordan is a regular on TalkSport and tends to speak on all things football and boxing.
In a recent Q&A on the TalkSport YouTube channel, Jordan was asked for his opinions on DAZN, who once again made a significant financial loss in 2021.
“I think the whole thing, in its original format, as a different opportunity to delivery boxing, was a good thing.”
“DAZN for me, as a model and concept, had merit and has substance behind it, because; A, the guy who is funding it has got more money than God and B, boxing with another portal, another opportunity to reach an audience was, in my view, was something that was useful. The problem is that their content is crap.”
Jordan did go on to admit that DAZN should not be overly concerned about turning a profit in the early years of their streaming venture.
“Twitter has never turned a copper coin, yet it has been sold for forty-five billion to Elon Musk. It’s about influence, it is about subscriber numbers, it is about building a business model that may take some time to get to where it is going to go to.
The problem, from DAZN’s point of view, is that the content that they are delivering is not good enough. There isn’t enough fights being made, their golden goose is playing hide and seek with himself, Anthony Joshua, trying to work out who and when he is going to fight. All of those things, to me, look like a proposition that is in decline.”
The controversial radio personality called DAZN a ‘snoozefest’ which he suspects must be causing Eddie Hearn some embarrassment.
“When you look at it past the big fights and you look at it as a platform, theres not a lot going on, theres not a lot of fresh content and you look at and go ‘his is a snoozefest’.
With a vested interest that boxing gets an audience where ever it goes it’s a little bit of disappointment, for Eddie Hearn I suspect it’s a little bit of an embarrassment.”
As DAZN and Matchroom continue their attempts to conquer more territories, a report from Sport Business revealed that the firm lost $1.36 billion in 2021.