Videoage International December 2021

some cases,” said Mayer, “it might be Sky. It could be local telcos and it could be other distributors. But those telecommunications companies, either pay-TV or telcos, are the most logical partners.” As for DAZN developing its own programming, Mayer explained, “We don’t want to make an undue investment there but we have some great stuff — a project from Eva Longoria, La Guerra Civil, about Latin American boxing. We also have a Ronaldo series, Ronaldo: El Presidente . People generally come to sports streaming services for live sporting events — that’s obviously where we are putting most of our money. But when you get them there and you can have some programming, or studio programming, that is talking about the matches that are about to come, or the matches they just saw about the league that they are covering, that is good and not expensive to have and we have a lot of that already. And some on-demand, pre-programmed unscripted series are interesting too.” Do they offer a linear service in addition to VoD? Said Mayer: “[DAZN is] an app environment for the most part, not a 24/7 channel or a traditional pay-per-view channel. It is not on-demand, per se, because it is timed for when the events happen. We do have 24/7 channels for some territories as a legacy business, but really it is an app, which lights up when these events are on [with] VoD elements to it [for] some original programming. This isn’t a substantial investment on our part, compared to the rights, but I’m proud of the original programming that we have and that’s available on demand.” And what about expansion in North America? “We are really focused on markets strategically,” he said, “where we can get major local rights that matter and deliver them to the local audiences. In the U.S. we have no current plans to try to get the NFL [American football], baseball, or the NBA [basketball]. We do have a great line-up of boxing and the UEFA Women’s Champions League in the U.S. and those are what we are offering. You will not see us in the near-term or mid-term going after those major rights in the U.S. [And] in Canada we have the NFL rights, and many others.” In terms of sports content targeted for acquisitions, Mayer said that it is “what rightsmatter the most in our core markets.” He then continued: “I have found, inmy experience, having launched ESPN Plus, and from my time at Disney, that having, on an exclusive basis, the most in-demand content that you can possibly get is the biggest driver of subscriptions and allows us to access all the other revenue streams that are very strategic, that I mentioned before. So we’ve got to get the rights that matter. In Italy that is Serie A, in Germany that is Bundesliga, and Spain that is La Liga, and the U.K. has a couple, with the English Premier League being by far the biggest. But then you have rugby and cricket that are actually pretty substantial. And let’s not forget darts in England. And in France you have Ligue 1, so those are the rights we want.” In Europe, DAZN also shows U.S. MSL football matches, and top Latin American football championships like Copa Li- bertadores and Copa Sudame- ricana. By Dom Serafini, pictured be- low during the Zoom interview with Mayer last month. December 2021 DAZN’s Kevin Mayer It’s NATPE Miami, and VideoAge will be on every Buyer’s Door