LONDON – It’s fight week in the capital as Moses Itauma and Filip Hrgovic prepare to do battle for the vacant IBF heavyweight title. There is a gravitas that has become attached to the fight, not just because of the IBF’s belt but because of what Itauma stands for: the future, the next generation, hope.
At a moment when DAZN – who exclusively broadcast the fight – tries to balance hardcore boxing fans, younger audiences, short-form content, long-form storytelling and an increasingly competitive market, I sat down with Alfie Sharman, the vice president of marketing at DAZN, to talk about the boxing landscape.
And DAZN have gone big on Itauma-Hrgovic with, as Sharman points out, advertising everywhere from Penzance to Inverness.
Before hitting record, we spoke a little about Itauma-Hrgovic and then sat down for a longer conversation about the sport – and DAZN’s place in it.
Tris Dixon: What you said there was actually really interesting [about Itauma’s specific skills] because that sort of feeds into one of my, I don’t want to say gripes, but one of the things I’ve seen a lot of is obviously when you talk about the subtleties of a jab and setting something up, you’ve got to feed two audiences, haven’t you? There’s the hardcore audience but you’ve also got to grab the casuals. And what I’ve sort of...
Alfie Sharman: You think we’re neglecting the diehards?
Well, what I’ve written about is that tough thing, I really appreciate your situation at DAZN, but I’ve always felt I’ve understood what DAZN want to do.
I do feel like there’s two things, there’s two masters that you need to serve, though, and obviously one is grab the short-form content and the reels and the Mount Rushmores and stuff, which obviously aren’t designed for people like me. But then you’ve got the other side where there is scope to do long-form stuff and tell the stories. And people say there’s no storytellers now, but it’s because people – I’ll throw a stone and say, like DAZN – want the short-form, bite-size stuff.
Problem is, you want people to invest in the characters, but if the characters aren’t out there, what are they investing in? Because they can’t invest in the clips where they’re seeing Brian Norman talking about someone else’s dress sense.
I know, yeah. Well, you’re a subscriber to DAZN, aren’t you?
Yeah, from day one.
And I mean, have you watched any of our recent Locked In long-form stuff?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I agree with you, by the way. We are constantly trying to spin two plates because we are a growth business. Let’s be honest, Tris, I’m not saying boxing was in a bad place before, but the injection of capital from DAZN over the last five-plus years, as well as Turki Alalshikh and other people, has opened up the opportunity for fighters to fight more, for more money, to bigger audiences, globally. Because we, make no mistake, sell pay-per-views in over 200 markets. Of course, this is a UK show, there’ll be people in the US and Croatia, but to your point, we have to spin those two plates. Long-form content and storytelling is, without doubt, because when you’re making something about Moses, and he’s such a young guy, you see his knockout ratio and you see his highlight reel and that kind of hooks a lot of people, but that will only go so far.
There comes a point where you need to scratch beneath the surface and start to understand who these people are – good or bad. Go back to Mike Tyson. Obviously, people were just transfixed by his personality, where he came from, the Cus D’Amato story, New York, the pigeons, everything.
We’re trying to do that with fighters. Now, obviously, to do that across all the promoters who have an abundance of talent is challenging. However, I do think, and I can assure you that we are hearing that because you’re not the first person that’s poked me on that in a professional environment, but also from out in the street.
I suppose the thing is as well, there’s also two audiences because the younger audience, like my 20-year-old son, for instance, he might click on the short-form content but I can’t see him putting his hand in his pocket. But the storytellers, once you’ve got the stories, the people with that disposable income, it’s also a different market.
And this is me speculating about the marketplace, but someone who’s 40 maybe might have that disposable income, wants to hear the stories. And they’re the ones spending the money, aren’t they?
Well, as you said there, it’s an important point. Propensity to pay is the challenge because one thing that DAZN, by design, is trying to do is, I always say this, we are attempting, we are succeeding. We haven’t succeeded, it’s a journey. But we’re trying to fundamentally change consumer behaviour towards boxing.
Casual fans are quite happy to dip in once or twice a year, pay a premium, certainly in the US, $90 to $100 for a pay-per-view and then leave. Whereas we’re saying, ‘No, no. You should come back every week because there’s so much more for you.’
Which actually, to your point, plays into how important it is that once people get into the DAZN ecosystem, that we are giving them and serving them characters and personalities. So we are investing in it. Clearly, from people like yourself, not to the level just yet that everyone is pleased with.
However, what I can say to respectfully combat what you’re saying is we are bringing in lots of younger generations, not just the Misfits, by the way, which I appreciate, you probably don’t like that either. But that isn’t our only funnel to the youth.
Social media is. And there is a balance between the two. We’re trying to strike it. Don’t get it perfect every time. But the money is there, we’re investing in it. I don’t like mud-slinging at other people, but even if it’s not enough just yet, we’re doing more than anyone else.
Sure. Let me ask you this about subscriber base. If you get to where you want to go, will the prices come down? And what I mean by that is obviously DAZN has had to pivot a lot over the years. There was ambition to get Premier League rights early doors, then obviously there was the pandemic. Different things have come up. And obviously then the ‘no pay-per-view’ and then pay-per-view and Ultimate package, the pivots are understandable in a business context… But if you were to get a super amount of subscribers worldwide, is it possible that the cost would go down because the cost is being shared?
Well, the priority is to make the current price point value for money. That has to be the priority. And I’m not going to dress that up any other way.
And bringing in more promoters, bringing in more fights. We always do offers, discounts for new customers… There’s an offer at 20 per cent off this week.
So there are incentives for people to come in. Our priority for boxing, which is obviously my primary focus, is to, if you want a better phrase, kind of acquire the market and then just give people a volume of shows that makes it value for money. DAZN is a multi-sport platform, and we have ambitions beyond my part of the business to be the global home of sport for live and, of course, non-live events, coming back to a previous point.
You mentioned the Premier League there. It was very public that we had a shot there. It was very competitive.
But our aspiration still is to add additional rights. The example that you gave in terms of share or model, as you can imagine, it’s not necessarily that easy or that simple, and it’s not common practice in a lot of places. But again, to go back to what I was saying up there [at the press conference], the two things that are really important is, one, making it value for money, so delivering against the claims like the Ultimate Plan, and number two, making it accessible for people like your boy, for example, who may not just be ready yet to commit to a monthly subscription and 52 weeks a year-round for boxing. He may not want to watch lesser-known fighters. He may just want to watch Moses and then come back. But the hope is that after time, he’ll start to get the flavour and come back, and then we’ll make it value for money for him as well.
You did mention a key word there as well, quantity. I don’t think people are complaining about the quantity. There are issues at times with the quality. Last Saturday was an example, talking about the depth of the bill with Rolly and Teo. Who has the final say on what a DAZN bill looks like? Or is it one person?
No, no. No, listen. I mean, obviously we work with our promoters, right? And, you know, Frank, Eddie, Oscar, et cetera, et cetera. All of these guys, Bob and the guys at PBC, and matchmakers, right? And they’re very clear on our objective, which is to deliver a quality product.
The cadence at which we’re putting on fights at the moment, certainly from what you would call a top-tier event, like what we would consider a platinum tier or a pay-per-view, the scheduling at the moment means that a lot of our main events are so strong that actually a lot of the audience are coming in for the main event. We have an objective of bringing people in earlier, right? Which obviously, to your point, means that we need to stack cards out. To answer your question directly, we have a say.
It’s our product. We have people that know the sport very well, but I’m not going to sit here and go toe-to-toe with the promoters. We pay them money to do that for us.
We approve the shows. We want to get into a place where we’re actually, in 2027, this is a bit of a spoiler, but we want to get to a place where actually we’re working with the fans to have some back-and-forth dynamic about who should feature on cards to incentivise people to come in early. But we’re trying to strike a balance, as always, between absolute quality, which, as a boxing fan, I hope you can acknowledge that August this year we’ve seen some fantastic fights on our platform, but also quantity to deliver against different markets as well.
Obviously, Teofimo is now a DAZN fighter.
He is, yeah.
Are there plans to build the DAZN stable out with individual fighters?
Well, our plan is to grow the sport, fundamentally. It’s a really cliché answer, but however that presents itself, whether that’s to do directly with a fighter like in this instance, if they’re available to do so and the contract allows and the relationships that we have beyond that work, that gives us, with Teo, a lot more say in what he does and equally we can hear directly from him what he wants to do. He obviously had a tough fight last weekend, but came out victorious. The direction of travel for us is probably a level above that, which is to grow the sport.
So that is why we’ve always collaborated with other broadcasters. Well, we’ve always collaborated with promoters that previously have not been too complimentary of DAZN, we can be quite thick-skinned. This is business. But our macro-objective is to grow the sport, and to do that you need to diversify how you trade and how you commercially do deals.
And that is by bringing people all in one place, that is by signing off more fights than anyone has ever signed before, and sometimes that is by doing direct deals with fighters as well.
It’s very hard for you guys because you’ve obviously done the deal with TNT in America, RTE for Katie Taylor in Ireland as well. It’s obviously big-picture viewing, isn’t it? You try and obviously increase the funnel size, but it’s also very hard to not be precious with your product and the fights that you’ve made.
It is. Well, certainly for me as well, my job is to market the product amongst other things, but my job is to grow the people that watch the DAZN products.
But equally, the perfect question there after what I just said, our objective is to grow the sport, and there are some times where putting it to the nation in Ireland to show what a spectacle next Saturday will be in Croke Park, it’s an iconic event. I mean, I’m a huge, huge fan of Katie Taylor, love Katie Taylor. The reality is, is more people will be able to watch on RTÉ than they would on DAZN. It’s just a fact.
So we are not too arrogant or precious to put a barrier in the way of that, because I would quite quickly get asked questions by people like you, and you’re saying, ‘Well, up there you’re saying, we want to make it accessible, we want more people to watch the sport,’ and then you’re saying, ‘but you’ve got to pay, I don’t know, 20 quid or a pay-per-view for whatever, and it’s not going free-to-air.’ So we have to deliver against these claims. We, myself, my team, my superiors, have an integrity and believe that actually in my time working in boxing, which has been six years now, integrity is really important to people.
Volume, quality, quantity, all those things, pricing is important, but integrity, so saying that you’re going to do something and then not doing it, or saying you’re going to do something and admitting that maybe the timing wasn’t right, like pay-per-view is dead, you have to take your medicine sometimes and deliver against what you’re told to deliver against. But it is tough.
How would you appraise the threat level posed by Zuffa?
The threat level? Well, we don’t see it as a threat. We’re working with them in two weeks’ time for Garcia-Benn. There’s a lot of people over on that side that have worked with DAZN.
We’ve got very good working relationship. They’re doing their thing. They are entering the market very aggressively.
In terms of that, by the way, let me just give you something to go on. Obviously they’ve talked about wanting to own the sport, and I don’t know what that means. From what they’ve said, it doesn’t sound like they’re keen on sharing.
That’s their prerogative. You can’t own a sport. The UFC is a very different sport.
They’ve been extremely successful. These guys know what they’re doing. Serious operators.
They have some smart people behind the scenes. Genuinely, we wish them the very best of luck because I like competition. So far, touch wood, we’ve surpassed all competition, and we’ve been steadfast in our growth, and we continue to do that.
We believe that by working with people like this, we can achieve our objective and still be the major player. Without being too punchy, excuse the cliché, it’s impossible for them to own the sport with the deals and the relationships that we have with all the major promoters.
There will always be edge cases and exceptions, but I’m very confident and comfortable in our position.
Was it the Golden Boy relationship with Ryan Garcia that got you the UK rights for that show?
Well, of course, we’ve done lots of work with Ryan. Of course, Ryan is a Golden Boy fighter. We renewed our terms with them [GBP] this year, of which Ryan was a big part of that.
So similar with the way that AJ fought on Netflix against Jake Paul, we were involved. I had a seat at that table. Similarly, we had a seat at this table.
Let’s also not forget that Conor Benn has fought on DAZN, with the exception of his fight against Regis [Prograis]. He’s fought – and there are a few fights at the start of his career on Sky Sports – largely on DAZN. So we have an affiliation with both of these fighters.
We have a huge market share in the United Kingdom and an opportunity to exclusively show that fight to fight fans. It’s at 4am, so we’re expecting probably a bit more of a die-hard, committed audience or super fans of Ryan or Conor, whether they want them to win or lose, by the way. But yeah, look, that obviously opened the door, but we’re very immersed in the sport anyway.
This is going to sound somewhat negative, and I don’t mean it to be, but is the Netflix thing tough to swallow?
Tough to swallow?
These big ones that are going away, because obviously you’ve got the deals with Eddie and AJ, which you’d assume would obviously include their fights, and then obviously it goes and fights on another platform.
It’s not. In all honesty, it’s not tough to swallow. I wouldn’t use that language, no. It’s business.
You know, I’m going to give you my honest answer, which is we are running a business, we’re running a growth business with very aggressive growth objectives, holistically across the entire DAZN group, by the way, of which boxing is an extremely successful part of that business. That’s something really important to convey to people, there is this...
It’s the number one sport for DAZN, right?
Yeah. Well, listen, I mean, obviously in France we have domestic football, in Germany we are what you would call...
Like ESPN or Sky Sports?
…other broadcasters are available. But in the UK we’re a boxing product, and we’ve invested significantly in boxing. Likewise, in the US, it’s a global property. It’s the only platform that you can plug in and watch boxing in 200 territories, which is why these people want to work with us.
However, Netflix is an entertainment platform. Netflix is on a different level in terms of scale and household penetration. Coming back to my previous point, believe me when I tell you it helps elevate and grow the overall sport.
Anthony Joshua’s social media profile went up 35 per cent in the United States after his fight against Jake Paul, which for growth, objectively, is important, right? It’s important for everyone in this room that people still invest in boxing. People may not like the way that some people do it sometimes, but believe me, you have to ruffle some feathers and be aggressive to do these things.
So no, it isn’t hard to swallow. It’s a business decision. We make sure it’s right for us.
Believe me, we make sure it’s right for us. But again, coming back to my previous point, it’s not just lip service. It’s important that we are open-minded to, number one, what our fighters want to do… I’m not in the business of muzzling fighters to not achieve their dreams and what they want to do. AJ wanted that fight. So, yeah, it’s not... In all honesty, threat and hard to swallow, these words don’t really register in my mind.
But in terms of what you said earlier, obviously, I’m 47, so I’m not an old demographic.
No, no, you’re our bullseye audience, basically.
Am I actually?
Well, there or thereabouts, really, depending on what plate you’re spinning.
Because I suppose, obviously, when I look at the... I’ll go back to the short-form stuff. I get it. It’s not that I don’t get it at all. I can cherry-pick what I choose to watch or I have a guilty scroll anyway. It’s one of those things, when you get to that point in your life and you think, ‘I can’t doom-scroll all the time’ as well.
But do you feel like there’s still misconceptions DAZN or do you feel like with what you’re putting out and the product you’re putting out, now you’ve got all the promoters under one roof? Do you feel like you’ve broken the back of the slog?
Yeah, I do. I mean, you tell me if there’s misconceptions based on what we’re saying. I mean, always, as you know, people live and breathe on social media and unfortunately, people don’t take to social media to be positive.
And boxing social media, specifically.
And boxing in particular, right?
So, as you can imagine, I don’t spend too much time observing, certainly against the short form, the types of comments that we get from people.
We have broken the back of it. We have done everything so far that we set out to achieve.
We work with every major promoter in the world, even the ones that people are considering to be a threat for us. We are willing to operate with the biggest entertainment platforms in the world. DAZN is distributed in the UK on Sky.
You can cast your mind back five years ago, everyone was asking me, ‘you know, Sky-DAZN relationship,’ we’ve distributed on Sky, Virgin Media, Prime Video. I can’t be any clearer by our actions. Without sounding really arrogant, yes, we have broken the back of it. But things can change very quickly. We need to keep tight between the ears and keep open-minded, which I like to think we are.
(All photos courtesy of Queensberry Promotions)
Is Moses going to be the first guy that really reaches out on a regular basis for you beyond the hardcore niche boxing fanbase in this country? Because, and just for parallel, with Sky, obviously, when Frank took the guys to Sky, they were saying, ‘You can’t build a household name on satellite TV.’ And obviously, we saw what he did with Ricky Hatton.
Possibly. I mean, listen, in the US, Ryan Garcia, Canelo, have been very good for us. You know, we’ve had some good results for Anthony Joshua as well. Admittedly, how can I put this respectfully, he’s been at a point in his career, I don’t think anyone can criticise the two losses against Usyk. You know, obviously, he had a good win against Jermaine Franklin, good win against Robert Helenius, which happened instead of Dillian Whyte, which he would have won anyway, good win against Otto Wallin. Tough win against Kristian Prenga. But we’ve seen some good numbers there. But this is AJ, and, it’s no disrespect to AJ to say that he’s in, what I would say, Q4 of his career, right? So, yeah, maybe Moses is that guy.
But there are some people that do just hit slightly differently and cross over, and I’ll give you an example, someone like Giorgio Vizioli. Not like that scale, but people love him. People commit to people like Giorgio.
George Liddard last weekend did really well for us. So, yes, of course, when you spend as much money as we are on someone like Moses, nationally, on outdoor campaigns, big billboards, eight-page pull-outs in The Sun, that demonstrates to me that there is a market demand as well. Because these guys want to write about him, so why would we not jump on it as well?
And you’ve got Odel Kamara, who’s recently signed with Matchroom. There’s excitement around him now.
A lot of excitement. So, that’s the thing. I mean, Moses is only 21, so it feels crazy that we’re talking about him already being here. But have you watched our Spotlight series on the platform? You should watch that because it’s long form. And as a boxing fan, Tris, like, that is us investing in the next generation. It’s going into camp.
We’ve done it with Giorgio Vizioli, George Liddard. We did it with Moses. We’ve done it in the States with ‘Shu Shu’ Carrington. We’ve done it with Emiliano Vargas, et cetera.
We’ve done about 20, right? So, I am genuinely, as a boxing geek – but also a marketeer with big visions for where DAZN could go – really excited about the now but about the future. And that is because we’re investing in the talent. We spend a lot of time with our promoters, whilst I come back to what I said, it’s their job to make the fights.
We do spend a lot of time with them talking about who’s next, who do we get behind and what are the stories, what are the narratives. I’m not going to lie to you, the world is different now. Fighters are different in how they approach and promote themselves.
It’s very different now. Not everyone’s Mike Tyson. But there’s a story in there and our job is to find it and we’ll continue to try and do that as long as we don’t break the bank.
And in terms of the overall thing that you said about in terms of trying to grow the sport, obviously Shay Segev announced a big deal last night, yesterday, didn’t he?
(Author’s note: DAZN acquired EverPass Media, allowing several important businesses to become minority stakeholders in DAZN, including TKO, RedBird and 32 Equity, though it was, of course, the TKO link that made headlines.)
Yes.
And in terms of the overall work that you said about, trying to grow the sport, obviously Shay Segev announced a big deal this week, didn’t he?
(Author’s note: DAZN acquired EverPass Media, allowing several important businesses to become minority stakeholders in DAZN, including TKO, RedBird and 32 Equity, though it was, of course, the TKO link that made headlines.)
Yes.
Which is, it’s strange because obviously we’ve seen DAZN and TKO sharing headlines. I know it’s different from the TNT one but it just shows that your reach is trying to spread the growth.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, that deal, of course, it picked up headlines in the boxing world as people would, out of context, put it together. These are big businesses. We’re a big global business with big aspirations, but I suppose you have to articulate your point, we’re making big commercial moves to grow our product.
That is by collaborating. That deal in particular is part of a broader strategy in the United States specifically, which will continue as a real priority for us because it’s such an opportunity, there’s such a legacy in boxing that we’re starting to reignite. TNT, this commercial premises deal, are ways for us to continue to push that on forward until we get to a point where you turn on every TV in the house and it’s DAZN – but we’re not quite there yet.
We’ll get there.
When did you get into boxing, Alfie, what started your passion?
Nineties, like when I was five years old.
So were you looking at like Benn, Eubank, Collins, those guys?
No, I’m a little bit younger than that. I was Prince Naseem, Lennox Lewis, Lennox, I used to stay and watch Lennox and then, really, when I got to like 15, 16, I was always, always watching Ricky, all Ricky’s fights, staying up late, and then I’ve gone and watched Pernell Whitaker, my favourite fighter of all time, old-school fights. What hooked me? It was Naz, it was Lennox, and then as I got into an older man who would pay money to watch, which is the people I’m trying to get, it was like Ricky, and it was like Bellew, Haye, Joe Calzaghe, Froch, Groves.
But yeah, it was Prince Naseem and Lennox Lewis, just the heavyweight scene… I’d never seen anyone as confident as Prince Naseem. I’m so excited to meet him on Saturday [Hamed is part of the DAZN broadcast team]. I can’t wait to meet him. I don’t get starstruck, I’m very fortunate to meet a lot of people, and I’ve been in the same room as him a few times but I’m looking forward to getting introduced to him on Saturday. But editorially it makes so much sense for us. He doesn’t come out too much, so I’m excited to see what he’s got to say.
Top man, Alfie, thank you so much.
No, I appreciate it.
Cracking chat Tris
Good interview Tris, thanks.