DAZN announces free access to women’s football content for remainder of 2023-24 season
Global sports streaming service DAZN is removing its paywall for all women’s football content in the UK for the rest of the 2023-24 season.
Traditionally a subscription-based service, DAZN will offer free access to women’s football matches from top leagues in Spain, Germany, France and Italy, as well as the Saudi Women’s Premier League.
DAZN holds global rights to the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL), meaning that all remaining matches of the prestigious tournament’s 2023-24 season will be broadcasted for free. This initiative opens up a total of 209 women’s football matches from six competitions, including 29 UWCL fixtures, 48 each from Germany’s Frauen Bundesliga and Spain’s Liga F, and 50 from Italy’s Serie A.
Having secured global UWCL rights since 2021, DAZN had previously made its group-stage coverage of the UWCL free in November of the previous year. This recent move extends the commitment to free coverage until the end of the 2023-24 season.
“What we see in women’s soccer is if you put a paywall up, there is a small proportion of people that are prepared to pay for it,” Hannah Brown, co-chief executive of women’s sport at DAZN, explained.
“But women’s soccer fans don’t exhibit those strong pay‑TV characteristics that we’ve seen around premium soccer in domestic markets, where you see customers make a real pay choice to interact with something. Women’s soccer fans are just not there yet.”
“The decision marries with the broader commitment to the launch of free. So, we announced this year what we’re going to be doing around ‘freemium’ content, and women’s football sits as part of that strategy. For us as a business, it’s the growth of a really important asset and about building a first-party relationship with customers on a global basis.”
The removal of the paywall is part of DAZN’s ‘New Deal’ campaign, aimed at ensuring a commercially robust future for women’s soccer. The initiative calls for collaborative efforts from clubs, sponsors, media, and rightsholders to provide high-quality experiences for fans.
Hannah Brown emphasised the critical juncture for the sport, saying, “The women’s game is at a crossroads. We see two possible futures. In one, stakeholders come together to build a major global commercial sport. In the other, progress is slow and a golden opportunity to accelerate growth is lost.
“The women’s game has significant commercial potential. The opportunity must be seized now. It requires a venture capital mindset, with an investment horizon measured over several years.”
As part of the ‘New Deal,’ DAZN is set to launch a free tier globally early this year, offering live matches, non-live content, and integrated products and services to registered users.
Last season’s UWCL coverage on DAZN’s Women’s Football YouTube channel garnered 55.2 million views, indicating a 19 percent increase from the previous year.
Image credit: Steffen Prößdorf
