Hearn strikes $1bn deal with American streaming service
British promoter to stage 16 fights a year in the US Battle on for Joshua after Showtime contract ends
Eddie Hearn has announced his intention to assemble “the biggest stable of fighters ever seen in the United States” after striking a $1billion (£741 million) transatlantic broadcast deal with an online streaming giant.
Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing has launched a joint venture with Perform Group, a global sports media company that broadcasts live sport through its DAZN on-demand streaming service, which has been dubbed the “Netflix of sport”.
Hearn, the promoter of Anthony Joshua, said the deal would provide him with a “war chest” that would allow him to recruit some of the country’s finest fighters as he steps up his assault on the US market.
Under the eight-year deal, Matchroom will stage 16 fights per year at major venues across the US. In a challenge to traditional payper-view cable broadcasters, DAZN will be the exclusive US broadcast partner for each of the fights, as well as Matchroom’s 16 fights in the United Kingdom.
“It’s a dream come true,” said Hearn, who will be attending today’s Telegraph Business of Sport conference.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to build an unrivalled stable in world boxing.”
Hearn, who first entered the American market last year, told The Daily Telegraph: “When we came to the US, we really needed a platform that would give us the volume of dates we needed to grow, and we needed a huge war chest to go out and get the very best fighters in the US.
“My job is to put the biggest fights on DAZN in the US, and build the biggest stable of fighters ever seen in the US. With the war chest I’ve got, I have every opportunity to do it. There is no excuse.
“All the promoters in the US want us to fail. Everyone will say it’s a new platform and it might not work. And I could see the argument, but not with the amount of money I have to spend.”
Hearn hopes that the deal will provide exposure in the US for young British fighters, and said he would reveal at the end of June which fighters he had recruited to a 30-strong stable.
He added that there is “every chance” that Joshua, who is a free agent in the US following the end of his Showtime deal, could fight on DAZN in the future. “Of course DAZN will be aggressively trying to recruit him to the channel,” Hearn said. The deal has been announced earlier than DAZN were originally hoping in order to allow the promoter to begin his recruitment of fighters.
Simon Denyer, the CEO of Perform Group, said the move was the latest step towards streaming services becoming the major players in sports broadcasting.
“We genuinely believe this is how all sport will be watched in three or four years,” he said. “If you look at what has happened with music and what has happened in TV, with Spotify and Netflix, it has radically changed things very, very quickly.”
DAZN, which launched in 2016, will be launching a challenge to traditional pay-per-view fights in the US, the price of which Denyer believes has become “completely ridiculous”.
DAZN is available in Canada, Germany, Japan, Austria and Switzerland. It shows Premier League and Champions League football in Austria and Germany, but Denyer said a move into the UK market is not currently a priority.
“We would love to launch in the UK, and we definitely will at some point. But we are handpicking markets based on the size of the market, the speed of broadband, the availability of rights and the price of rights.
“The UK does not come to the top of the list when you look at those.” The Telegraph’s Business of Sport conference takes place today in London. Speakers and panellists include boxing promoter Eddie Hearn, former England internationals Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard, hockey Olympian Helen Richardson-walsh and British Cycling’s chief executive Julie Harrington.