DAZN has never been a streaming platform particularly loved by Italian fans since, in July 6 years ago, has become part of the sporting (and above all football) offer in our country. Complaints about the high prices, the poor video quality of streaming, the various inefficiencies and the technical problems (infinite buffering, sudden interruptions) arose almost immediately (with the intervention of AGCOM), but the British platform continued to crunch numbers, until it became (like it or not) a “necessary” reality for Italian football fans.
In 2021, DAZN won the rights to broadcast all 380 seasonal matches of the Serie A championship for the three-year period 2021/2024 (some shared with Sky) and, at the moment, in Italy the platform owns the Serie A TIM rights (all matches, of which 266 out of 380 are exclusive, until the 2028/2029 season), as well as several football leagues, Italian and non-Italian basketball, UFC, Eurosport channels, extensive coverage of the upcoming Paris Olympics and other secondary sports.
Nevertheless, there are now several clues that point to seeing DAZN as a company that is increasingly in difficulty. Let’s think for example of the lost battle against Sky for the rights to the European Football Championships, to the slow but inexorable decline in interest in football (especially among younger people)to the increasingly less substantial financial support from TIM and, above all, to the recent and heavy price increases which demonstrate a strong need to raise cash.
In mid-May, after an already rather substantial increase in January (around 20% more), DAZN has announced a further increase for August regarding offers with an annual commitment and with a single payment solution such as DAZN Plusas well as even steeper increases for those who pay via the Google Play Store.
Let’s take for example the DAZN PLUS Annual offer with single payment, which starting from August will cost 599 euros per year compared to 449 euros last year (and in January it had already increased to 539 euros), while the Standard plan remains at 359 euros as in January (but in 2023 it cost 299 euros). The monthly payment offer is even more expensive, which in the case of DAZN Plus is preparing to go from 552 euros per year in 2023 to 700 euros (14 euros more per month).
As we mentioned above, the increases become even heavier for those who decide to subscribe to DAZN via the Google Play Store and not via the DAZN website. In this case, in fact, the annual plan deferred in 12 installments goes from 34.99 euros to 39.99 euros per month, without obtaining anything more in exchange; even, without the annual constraint, a single month of DAZN Plus costs 69.99 euros (in practice 840 euros per year), while it drops to 49.99 euros per month for the Standard plan.
A few days after the announcement, DAZN decided to extend these increases not only to new customers, but also to those who are already subscribers, therefore opting to that odious approach (also common to other similar platforms, it must be said) which does not reward long-time customers, considering them the same as new ones. And, as often happens with other companies (just think of Sky with its subscriptions), it could be almost more convenient to cancel DAZN now and, hoping for probable offers for the start of the 2024-2025 Serie A, resubscribe in mid-August.
We were therefore not surprised when, a few days later, a parliamentary question from a group of senators and deputies of the PD to the Minister of Business and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso implied a possible harmful conduct by DAZN towards consumer rights, also in light of lack of technical improvements (streaming quality) that could justify similar price increases.
It should not be forgotten that the recent anti-piracy law, with the establishment of the much contested Piracy Shield, should have led, albeit with not exactly immediate effects, to a drop in the prices of these platforms, while exactly the opposite is happening.
If all these clues were not enough to frame the current one as a moment of difficulty for DAZN, a recent article from ItaliaOggi has been added, according to which the company is apparently implementing an internal restructuring plan to cut the costs necessary to support a structure that is becoming increasingly complex and expensive.
According to ItaliaOggi, in fact, DAZN would not have renewed several fixed-term contracts and would have significantly reduced some editorial content and renounced several names of journalistic appeal. It is also true that the contents will remain the same at the level of matches, meetings and games and that, in addition to the 6 channels for coverage of the 2024 Olympics, DAZN announced last month the arrival of 10 free ad-supported television channels for sports such as boxing, darts and lacrosse, but the feeling is that the company does not know he’s doing well anyway and that such price increases in the space of just one year denote a somewhat “desperate” move to try to stay afloat.
For its part, DAZN immediately denied both the recent claims of Fabrizio Corona about an imminent bankruptcy of the company, and the rumors that spoke of a sale of the company to a telco. All that remains is to wait for new developments, at least hoping that There will be no further price increases between now and the end of the year and that the company’s promises for a technical improvement of the viewing experience (thanks to NVP’s modern Innovation Hub in Cologno Monzese) really come true.
© 2024, MBEditore – TPFF srl. All rights reserved.
