Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik has pumped a further $827mn into his global sports streaming service DAZN as the London-based company seeks further investment from the Middle East to support its plans to become the “Spotify of sport”.The latest commitment takes Blavatnik’s investments in DAZN to more than $6.7bn since it was founded in 2016, which has funded an unprecedented buying spree across top-tier European football, boxing, basketball, motor sports and American football’s NFL in more than 200 markets.Shay Segev, DAZN chief executive, told the Financial Times that the flurry of deals would further the company’s ambition to become “the global home of sport”, adding that “we’re just getting started”.However, financial results to be posted at the UK’s Companies House next week will show that the multibillion-pound bet on the future of sport broadcasting has yet to pay off financially.While revenues rose to $2.7bn in 2023, from $2.2bn in 2022, DAZN recorded a widening loss to $1.4bn in the year to the end of 2023, from $1.2bn in 2022, according to the accounts seen by the FT.Segev said that, although not reflected in the 2023 financial results, most of the top-ten markets in which DAZN operated were now profitable.He said he expected revenues to surpass $6bn in 2025, driven in part by additional revenues from its acquisition of Australian pay television company Foxtel and the rights to Fifa’s expanded Club World Cup football tournament.“We see a clear path to create massive shareholder value. We’re going to be the global home for sport. If you are a sports fan anywhere in the world, you are going to know DAZN.”To achieve this it will seek to build on its app so that sports fans cannot only watch premium sports, but also read news and analysis, bet online, socialise with other fans and purchase tickets and merchandise. DAZN had about 300mn monthly customers around the world in 2023, according to company insiders, but only about 20mn paying subscribers. The company — now one of Britain’s largest private companies — has been “underpinned by very significant funding from the group’s principal shareholder, Access Industries”, the accounts say.In its 2023 financial period, the company received $240mn through new ordinary and preference shares funding, with an additional $587mn “to support growth” in exchange for further preference shares since the year end. The accounts show that Access — Blavatnik’s investment group — has to date provided DAZN with a total of $6.7bn.Rights costs in 2023 were $3.1bn, an increase of about a third compared with the previous year. The accounts also show that the group has future rights commitments of $9.3bn, showing the extent of the investment it has made in recent years. DAZN executives say the ambition was to create a $200bn media group that would offer subscribers the sporting equivalent of Spotify, the music streaming platform. DAZN has become one of the world’s largest sports streamers, adding French football to a roster of big European markets, including Germany, Italy and Spain. It has other sports rights spanning Japanese football and baseball to MMA fighting. In 2023, it acquired Eleven Sports, providing rights to sports in Belgium, Portugal and Taiwan, and also struck a deal to show the NFL Game Pass internationally. Last year the broadcaster struck a deal with Fifa to show the Club World Cup around the world in a $1bn deal. Segev said the football tournament being held in June and July would be a big focus for DAZN, with the company expecting 1bn people to watch games between some of the world’s biggest club teams.He said some matches would be offered to terrestrial broadcasters to show, while he hoped it would, in particular, help DAZN expand in the US, which is hosting the tournament. In December, it struck its biggest deal yet, agreeing to buy Foxtel from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Telstra in a A$3.4bn ($2.1bn) deal, which includes control of its portfolio of domestic and international sports broadcast rights including cricket, the Australian Football League and National Rugby League.As a result of the deal, the former owners of Foxtel will take a 9 per cent stake in DAZN, becoming the second-largest shareholders in the company, which values the group at close to $10bn, according to people familiar with the terms. DAZN has also held talks about selling a stake in the business to the sports investment arm of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to people close to the talks. They added that the group was also likely to bring in additional institutional funds as shareholders before pursuing a medium-term plan of listing the group on a stock market. Segev declined to comment on the Saudi talks — saying “we will need to see what happens” — but added that there had been more interest broadly in the business. It already has a close relationship with the kingdom, including coverage of boxing in Riyadh, and is planning to launch a localised app for the region in Arabic. DAZN recently broadcast the rematch between Britain’s Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine in collaboration with Riyadh Season.
