DAZN has now officially confirmed which has been accepted for a few days: The Champions League will remain with the sports streaming service and the live broadcasts will even be expanded due to a competition model – Sky, however, did not take part in the UEFA game.
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While at first glance Sky customers have to look further down the drain, DAZN and UEFA are extending their successful partnership for broadcasting the Champions League in Germany until 2027. What initially sounds like a success might quickly turn out to be a boomerang. It is well known that such an extension often costs nine to ten figures.
DAZN snaps at the disguised Super League – Sky better off without the Champions League?
The premier class of European club football, which already favors the big leagues at this point in time, will mutate into an even more inflated construct with the start of the new rights period in a year and a half. A risky trend in times of weariness with live football and an increasingly visible annoyance among the public. The question will be: Who is still involved?
“Swiss system” conceptually rather Swiss cheese
With the start of the 2024/25 season, UEFA is changing the format of the competition, increasing the number of eligible teams from 32 to 36 and replacing the group stage with a ‘Swiss system’ league stage. In the league phase, each club plays eight games once morest eight different opponents (four home and four away games), which are drawn in advance. From a sporting point of view, however, this is a very questionable approach, as you don’t even play once morest quarters of the participants. The comparative value in the table is therefore very low.
Nonetheless, the top eight teams qualify automatically for the knockout stage, while teams ranked 9th to 24th in playoff matches (two legs) will battle it out for the remaining eight spots in the round of 16. Practical, because you get even more games.
From the 2024/25 season, DAZN will broadcast 186 of a possible 203 games live per season, 65 more than at present. As before, the sports platform will broadcast all games on Wednesday and all but one on Tuesday (stays with Amazon Prime Video) live and exclusively, both as individual games and in the conference – in the league phase and also in the knockout phase. In addition, the annual finale will be co-exclusive to DAZN as before.
One can only congratulate Sky on not having afforded such a piece of crap
From Sky When it came to the award of the TV rights to the Champions League from 2025 onwards, the only statement was: “Despite all our interest, we went into the process with an economically clear and responsible view of the value of sports rights and were therefore not ready in the interests of our customers , to go beyond the value that we place on that right.” So the prices for the Champions League are simply considered too expensive.
Not stupid: This is how the cup of a potentially multi-billion dollar risk investment passes you by. DAZN, on the other hand, will – even if it is up to date annual subscription lowered once more – have to see how many price increases you still want to do to your customers in order to finally become profitable. One thing is certain: the acquisition of the rights to the Champions League has not made this any easier.
Image source:
- ChampLeague_DAZN_Sky: © UEFA, DAZN, Sky
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