Streaming service DAZN just wrapped up its second season as the international home of NFL Game Pass. That second season was quite successful for them, seeing gains of 23% and 47% year-over-year growth in paid and free subscribers, respectively. Zander Berlinski, the senior vice president of strategy and business development at DAZN, recently spoke to Awful Announcing and said they were thrilled with the growth they saw.
“It was definitely a great second season,” he said. “In the first year we grew the subscriber paid subscriber base over 30%, the second year we grew it again more than another 20% year over year. So that’s really strong growth that we’re continuing to see in the product.”
Berlinski said the second year allowed them to improve and add to the international version of Game Pass in a way the first year of that takeover didn’t.
“We made a lot of different improvements holistically around the product in year two. I think year one was very much focused on the migration, getting the basic setup, and then year two was really an opportunity for us to step change the experience for customers.”
That’s been seen from the NFL side as well. In a release, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell spoke to the importance of the DAZN deal (signed in February 2023 and runs for 10 years) and cited it as a significant step up from what they previously had.
“The NFL’s media distribution strategy has long been a key part of our growth and success. As we look to become a global brand, providing fans around the world access to our games is incredibly important. In just two years as our Game Pass partner, DAZN has brought first-class technology and innovation to the product, providing a better viewing experience for our fans and helping to grow our game.”
A big part of DAZN’s year two change was increased localization, including offering more game feeds in different languages. Berlinski said that was key to their growth.
“We localized a lot more games on platform this year in local commentary,” he said. “We offered games in a variety of languages, I think up to six languages across a given week. And we saw a lot of uptake in terms of being able to attract more customers who want to watch the game in their local commentary.”
Berlinski said those local-language game feeds are one of the biggest advancements DAZN has made compared to the previous NFL Game Pass service internationally, and they’re bringing in new fans.
“We see two types of fans in the Game Pass experience. You have your avid diehard fans, who are either maybe expats who are living abroad or people who have followed the game closely and want to have the American experience. So having the English broadcast is really important. And I think, frankly, in the years prior to moving to DAZN where the NFL operated the product themselves, they did a really good job capturing that core avid diehard fan.”
“But one of the main reasons why they wanted to do the deal with us, one of the big important pieces for them is how they grow beyond that base to both create new fans but also move fans along the funnel from maybe a more casual fan into that sort of avid diehard bucket. And in order to do that internationally, there’s obviously a subset of customers who don’t necessarily want that American experience, either because maybe English isn’t their first language, or even if they do speak English, they prefer watching sport in their domestic language.”
Berlinski said that the localization focus goes beyond just commentary language to further details, such as making those broadcasts welcoming to new fans. While NFL figures have often talked about the importance of welcoming new fans through international and diversity efforts, alternate feeds, and more, Berlinski said that’s vital for DAZN as well.
“There are all of the nuances that come with that, not only from a language perspective, but the presentation, how commentators might talk about the game, so on and so forth. One of the important things for the NFL is ‘How do we move beyond that diehard base to continue to grow the product and create new fans?’
“And for us, increasing localization is one of the levers that we really felt could do that. It was something that we had heard from fans as something that they wanted, and so was something we particularly wanted to invest in. And we saw a bunch of success in the markets where we were doing it, being able to increase the appeal to customers who maybe are looking for something different than that sort of core American English experience.”
He said they found particular success with broadcasts in Spanish, Portuguese, and German.
“We saw a lot of success in Germany, where we were doing up to six games a week in German, as well as Brazil, with games in Portuguese. Brazil was obviously a big focus this year given the first international game that they did there, and they’re going to continue to play there moving forward. Brazil was actually a market that we saw pop very strongly this year from a growth perspective.
“We also were localizing in Spanish across Spain and much of Latin America. And we saw a lot of engagement there, particularly in Mexico. Those are the three I would say have had the strongest growth, but we’re looking to expand beyond that for next year.”
The NFL hosted games in Brazil and Germany last year, has hosted games in Mexico in the past (most recently in 2022), and is set to play in Germany, Brazil, Spain, Ireland, and England this year. Berlinski said tapping into excitement about NFL on-location games is a vital part of growing Game Pass in those markets.
“The games coming to market are really important in just building awareness of the game. And we try to tailor our marketing approach and packaging offers, promotion, et cetera to take advantage of that.”
He said the NFL’s focus on growing international games even more is a great benefit for DAZN, and they’re well-aligned in terms of the areas both are keying on.
“It’s really exciting for us that the NFL is clearly committed to increasing that presence abroad. And we’re in close lock step with them in terms of what their focus markets are, and then how we can work with them.
“I think the good thing is a lot of their focus markets are also the same focus markets for DAZN as a whole, and complements where we’re really big as well, in terms of our core domestic rights and our product outside of the NFL. So I think it’s a very good complementary relationship in terms of the ability to cross-sell and use our base. And our base has shown an ability to grow the platform very successfully from that perspective.”
Berlinski said that the NFL helps make the international games an experience beyond the games in particular.
“The NFL is really good at, I would say, creating these spectacle-type events, whether it’s the Super Bowl or international games. And they become what I’d say are more cultural moments, beyond just someone who necessarily is only focusing on the NFL.
“When they come to London for three weeks, you start to see it all over the city and it becomes a talking point within the market. And there’s an excitement with not only the game, but the ability to experience the NFL and an American culture experience that maybe they don’t necessarily get in other sports in those countries.”
Berlinski said there are a lot of ways DAZN can tap into that excitement, including with promotional pricing.
“We really want to draft off the back of that and of the increased awareness within markets to take advantage of those. …From a pricing and proposition perspective, for example, for the Brazil game or for the three games in London, we ran special promotions in those markets where we ran a discount on our product during those weeks to take advantage of that more casual fan. Perhaps they’re not willing to commit to the full-price product, but if we can sort of leverage on the buzz in-market and bring them in, we can grow them from there.”
He said they’ve also had on-site activations around many of these games.
“We do a lot of things on the ground working with the NFL. We have activations in-stadium, activations outside the stadium. The NFL in certain markets runs a Fan Fest, which is an experience for a couple of days that fans can go to. We have booths in those fan fests explaining what Game Pass is, giving offers.”
Some of those on-site activations even include a localized language commentary aspect, as Berlinski noted.
“In Brazil, we had a booth outside the stadium where people could actually watch a play and do their own commentary in Portuguese of the play, and then that would post to social. It was a cool sort of social experiment; they could post it to social and it would then promote [the game] and the localized commentary that we had on DAZN.”
He said DAZN’s international scale and existing partnerships give it new ways to promote Game Pass.
“Because of our team and capabilities there, we’ve done a lot of things even bespoke to NFL that probably wasn’t possible from a resource perspective previously, We did a partnership with Samsung in the UK this year where if you purchased a new TV you got a gift code for a free subscription to DAZN. We did a similar activation with with TCL in Mexico. We did a partnership with the Jets where they actually launched an international fan club, and as part of that fan club we gave away memberships.
“That’s another pillar when you think about not only acquiring new subscribers, but also ‘How do we grow the awareness of the brand without necessarily having to go out and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing?’ That’s another pillar of our business that’s been really big for DAZN. And just taking that expertise and applying it to GamePass has been something that, when we speak to the commissioner, is a piece of the puzzle that they didn’t previously have.”
Berlinski said another important element of that scale is the range of platforms the DAZN app is available on.
“One of the core reasons the NFL potentially wanted to shift over to us was the existing platform that we had in place. And not to put down their prior tech partner or anything, but I think just because of the scale we operate at and the global reach, there were a ton of benefits that we were able to bring to consumers overnight just by moving on to our platform.
“One example might be that the number of devices that the app was available on almost doubled when it moved to our platform. just because creating an app for every single smart TV, et cetera, costs money. If you’re an independent app, maybe that investment doesn’t necessarily make sense in some of the longer-tail things. But if you’re a global sports app with our scale and size, our perspective is we want to be everywhere that a potential fan might want to watch, and meet fans where they want to watch, not force them to watch somewhere else.”
Berlinski said that scale also includes promotion for Game Pass on DAZN’s other broadcasts, of the NFL and beyond.
“The scale and existing base we had also provided another benefit. We did a lot of things on platform to promote Game Pass to our existing subscribers. We obviously have a wealth of knowledge and data. We were the domestic broadcaster in six countries for the NFL even before the Game Pass deal. So we knew we already have a large selection of customers who want to engage with NFL content on our platform. And the ability to upsell those people into Game Pass for the full experience was something that I think was a benefit.
“And there’s an ability for us to do more bespoke experiences. For example, in Germany, we have a couple million people watching the Bundesliga game on a Sunday, there’s an easy experience there to say, when that game is ending, ‘Why don’t you guys move on over to the NFL?’, and promote the 1 or 4 p.m. Eastern window in that slot. I think those are a lot of things that as an independent app, where you just had Game Pass in a silo, you wouldn’t have been able to do.”
DAZN also offers things such as the Game Pass “Ultimate Tier,” new this year, which combined both new broadcast features (including multiview, HDR, and 4K) with non-broadcast things, such as a NFL Shop discount offer and a chance to get tickets to the international games. Berlinski said there’s a wider strategy at DAZN to integrate merchandising and betting aspects as well as broadcast ones, and fans can expect more of that down the road.
Speaking of bespoke experiences, those go beyond promotions and alternate-language feeds. DAZN has also done alternate English broadcasts, such as one with the hosts of The Good, The Bad, and The Rugby podcast. Berlinski said that fit right in with that vision of trying to bring in new fans.
“That was a free watch along that we did alongside the free game of the week, where we had this rugby podcast that had a good following. It’s not exactly the same sport, but there’s a decent overlap in terms of the similarities between the two sports and, and what the interest might be from a fanbase. There are some former rugby players who are obviously in the NFL, so there’s some overlap there.
“And really, that broadcast was aimed at trying to bring in a casual or even completely new audience and explain the game. So we had them sort of commenting in a traditional watchalong experience on the game, but in a more educational perspective, I’d say, where they were making direct comparisons to rugby or explaining certain parts of the game.”
He said offering that broadcast for free was vital as a way to draw in new fans.
“For us, I think that’s really critical in terms of again trying to leverage that, how do we serve that new fandom base and get them interested in the sport. And that’s the reason we put it ahead of the paywall, because if you’re someone that’s new to the game, you may not want to pay to watch that, but if it’s free, you could be interested.”
Berlinski said he thinks there’s great potential for alternate broadcasts to bring people in.
“Experiments like that are all about just how do we get fans who are sports fans, but maybe not potentially NFL fans yet, but could have a predilection to become one, across and involved and interested in the game. And then once they’re in our ecosystem, there’s obviously things we can do to get them to engage further and hopefully then create more added fandom out of them.”
He said that now that DAZN has two years of Game Pass under its belt, it can try more different approaches like that.
“Year one was really about ensuring stability of the platform, getting the migration correct, obviously growing the base and educating consumers about who we are. And then year two was really the first step of ‘How do we start to take this thing to the next level and introduce new things?’ I think we did a really good job of that this year, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg from that perspective.”
