After a rocky launch in Canada last season with a stream fraught with glitches, sports streaming service DAZN is extending its digital rights to NFL Sunday Ticket to some of Canada’s biggest pay-TV providers.
The Perform Group-owned over-the-top sports streaming service has announced partnerships with Bell, Rogers, Shaw, SaskTel, among other smaller providers, to distribute certain Sunday games in Canada. The deal enables the Canadian providers to sublicense, with Bell already announcing a partnership with Telus, a mobile wireless company.
“We are happy to be partnering with Canadian cable providers to give Canadian NFL fans more choice when it comes to their viewing experience,” said Joseph Markowski, DAZN’s senior vice president of revenue in an interview. “We are proud of the progress we’ve made since our launch last summer, including adding some top-notch sports properties to our offering and substantial platform improvements that fans will notice and enjoy.”
The company plans to add “even more sports programming” in the coming weeks, Markowski said.
While DAZN (pronounced da-zone) is licensing out rights, it nevertheless maintains exclusive Sunday Ticket rights in Canada and will still be the only place where fans can watch every single live NFL game (through NFL Game Pass). That includes pre-season, regular season and postseason games, plus exclusive access to NFL RedZone. The company won the Canadian NFL rights last season with a five-year contract that runs through the 2021/22 season.
SportTechie Takeaway
DAZN recently launched in the U.S. with a spectrum of MMA and boxing content. It is positioning itself as a Netflix for sports programming with promises to challenge existing players, including ESPN+. The company, however, has been simultaneously dealing with backlash from NFL fans in Canada.
DAZN isn’t the only streaming service to have given others access to rights after struggling with problems. During this year’s World Cup, Australian company Optus turned over its exclusive rights to public broadcaster SBS after significant streaming issues.