STREAMING SERVICE DROPPED THE BALL ON NFL’S OPENING NIGHT
The first sign something might be amiss with the NFL’s new choice for its every-game-every-week broadcast package in Canada came early, when the July press release clarified that DAZN was pronounced “Da Zone.”
It sounded like a name workshopped by middle-aged marketers who were certain that young people — presumably the target market for a streaming-only service — said things like “get in Da Zone.” The Poochie of NFL broadcast partners, if you will.
But you could at least see the NFL’s logic with the move. In selling its Canadian rights to the Game Pass package — a digitalonly subscription that offers every NFL game, plus the frenetic RedZone channel and the NFL Network — to a third party and effectively killing the Sunday Ticket packages previously offered by cable and satellite providers, the league was testing the idea of a post-cable world, and doing so in a decent-sized market.
Add in the fact there was never likely to be a huge demand for Sunday Ticket in this country — a good chunk of the NFL’s weekly games are already available via time-shifting options through traditional television distributors — and the league might naturally try to drive digital-only growth with a partner like DAZN that does that as its core business. The U.K.-based company previously launched in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Japan.
That was the theory, at least. So far the move to DAZN has been rough. Rough like the Atlanta Falcons in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LI. For Thursday night’s regular season opener between New England and Kansas City, the uptick in angry complaints addressed to DAZN Canada via its social media accounts, previously evident any time pre-season games were broadcast, swelled to a torrent.
Service issues — delayed feeds, low-quality feeds, non-existent feeds — that have been a common problem since DAZN launched in this country turned into a Thursday night game that was missing the audio for a large part of the broadcast, plus the usual litany of complaints about the service not working at all on various devices. (For the $20 monthly fee, DAZN is supposed to be streamable on all “major devices,” including Apple TV, smart TVs, game consoles, iOS and Android mobile and desktop browsers.)
By game’s end, DAZN Canada posted: “We know there were issues tonight — making your experience the best it can be is our top priority and we are working hard to deliver for fans.”
One assumes when DAZN vowed to #ChangeDaGame, it did not intend that change to mean making the games unavailable.
In an interview earlier this week, before the Thursday night shemozzle, Alex Rice, managing director of strategic partnerships for DAZN, acknowledged there were “ongoing challenges” with the entry into Canada and “we’re taking it very seriously.”
Rice said the problems with the feeds were primarily a lower frame rate or the lack of an HD picture, which are definitely significant issues. A slow frame rate produces “jagged” pictures, like what happens when an online video loads slowly or stutters through a buffering process. It is not fun to watch a quarterback throw a pass, and then watch the picture stutter for 10 seconds before discovering if the ball was caught.
Still, Rice said “we are very confident we can provide a quality service” in Canada, adding “it’s a bit of a customer education thing as well.” Meaning, not everyone will have the right technology, either their device or their internet connection or both, to ensure the streaming is ideal.
He allowed that the negative feedback in this country had been heard — “it’s a socially active and engaged audience in Canada,” he said, diplomatically — but also noted that, since DAZN does not require a longterm subscription, customers who find it wanting in the coming weeks could cancel. Uh, silver lining, I guess?
Give DAZN credit at least for acknowledging its troubles, which is a different tack than that taken by the National Football League, so far oddly silent on the issues here with its new partner. I asked on Tuesday to speak to someone at the NFL about the DAZN partnership, was told that a lot of executives were travelling, and in the days since have received no response to multiple follow-ups.
Perhaps they are just very busy, but when a sports league sells exclusive rights to its every-game package to one provider, it is no small problem when that provider face-plants in the opening days of the season.
Those Canadians who are swamping DAZN’s social media accounts aren’t just mad because the service isn’t working, they are mad because NFL Game Pass isn’t available from anyone else in this country.
One possible reason the NFL isn’t saying anything much about this yet? Because the league is still considering the scope of the problem. DAZN’s parent company, U.K.-based Perform Group, announced in May that it was going to market the NFL’s broadcast rights in more than 100 countries outside the United States and Europe, including Canada and Mexico. Game Pass was said to be a big part of that growth.
We’ll go ahead and put them down for an early fumble. DAZN’s next big test comes on Sunday.
Good luck to those manning the social media accounts.