Hearn announces 8-year, $1 billion streaming deal on DAZN

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn revealed a new huge $1 billion, 8-year deal to have his fighter’s bouts streamed live on DAZN. Matchroom will be partnered with Perform Group. All total, it’ll be 32 nights of boxing with none of them being on pay-per-view.

Instead, the consumers will pay per month for the streaming service. 16 of the fights will be in the United States and another 16 in the United Kingdom. The service begins in September.

The big question is whether the U.S consumers are going to want to pay to see Hearn’s fighters. The boxing fans already pay a lot of money for basic cable in the U.S. Asking them to pay more on top of that to see fights might be break the bank. If Hearn makes affordable to the fans with a low monthly fee, then it’s possible that it could. For Hearn to get the U.S boxing fans to want to purchase this per month, he’s going to need to sign a lot of boxers from the U.S, which is exactly what he intends on doing. With the kind of money that Hearn will be getting for the streaming deal, he’s going to be able to sign plenty of top fighters from American.

“This is open season for fighters in the U.S.,” Hearn said during Thursday’s news conference.“If you’re out there, if you don’t have a promotional contract, if you’re a world class fighter, we want you. If you’re a world champion no more fighting once a year. No more waiting on your date. We’ve got the dates, the money and the platform to give you regular championship contests.”

There are only a few fighters that the American boxing fans are interested in seeing and that’s Gennady Golovkin, Saul Canelo Alvarez and to some extent Adrien Broner. Top Rank is pushing their fighters on ESPN, but they’ve yet to create a superstar that the casual boxing fans want to see in large numbers. Vasyl Lomachenko, the one that Top Rank is working hard at promoting, is in the wrong weight class to get the casual boxing fans excited about him. He’s not exciting to watch like Golovkin and Canelo.

Here is the short list of fighters that Hearn says he wants to add to his Matchroom Boxing stable:

– Deontay Wilder

– Jermall Charlo

– Jermell Charlo

– Danny Garcia

– Errol Spence Jr.

– Keith Thurman

– Adrien Broner

– Mikey Garcia

– Shawn Porter

– Leo Santa Cruz

– Abner Mares

– Jarrett Hurd

Many of these fighters are signed with Al Haymon. It looks like Hearn is going to raid Haymon’s fighters and look to sign them up with big money offers. It’ll be interesting to see if these fighters stay loyal to Haymon or if they’ll take the money offered to them by Hearn. Will Haymon bid to keep these guys? It would be crazy to see Wilder signing with Hearn, because he’s had bad blood with him over the way that he’s been dragging his feet with the negotiations for the Anthony Joshua fight.

The fighters that make sense for Hearn to throw a huge wad of money at from that list is Deontay Wilder and Errol Spence Jr. Those guys will be able to hold on at the top for a while. Danny Garcia has seen better days, and he’s probably not going to do much more. Mikey Garcia is a good fighter, but he’s not the same guy at 140 as he was at 126, 130 and 135. Mikey is moving back down to lightweight, but he’s probably going to lose to Vasyl Lomachenko when the two of them face each other.

I don’t know how many U.S boxing fans will want to pay to see guys like Adrien Broner, who looks over-the-hill, and once a year Keith Thurman. Those two were good fighters at one point, but they’re not reliable and in Broner’s case, he’s not the fighter he once was five years ago.

If Hearn is unable to sign any of those fighters, it’s going to be difficult for him to get the U.S boxing fans to want to pay to see his fighters from the UK. Hearn has one popular fighter in his Matchroom Boxing stable and that’s IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. He fights two to three times a year. That’s not going to be enough for Hearn to sell 16 dates in the U.S. Hearn’s other U.S fighters Daniel Jacobs and Jarrell Miller aren’t the type of fighters that U.S boxing fans would want to pay to see. Miller looks very average. He struggled recently to beat Johann Duhaupas. Jacobs has looked pedestrian since losing to Gennady Golovkin last year. Jacobs has won his last two fights against Luis Arias and Maciej Sulecki, but he was underwhelming in both fights. Hearn is probably going to need to push like made to get Jacobs to fight Jermall Charlo now if he wants to entice some fans to start paying to see fights on his new streaming service. That fight might not happen though because Jacobs is now the WBA mandatory challenger after beating Maciej Sulecki. There’ no point for Jacobs to risk his neck fighting Charlo when he’s got a guaranteed title shot waiting for him.

”It’s a much bigger budget than HBO and Showtime… possibly put together!” Hearn said.

Hearn has already signed former IBF middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs, but he’s starting to look like a faded fighter and he’s not someone that Hearn will likely be able to get 8 quality years out of. It’s unclear whether Hearn will even have Jacobs available for 16 fights year on DAZN, because he currently has a deal with HBO. If Jacobs stays under contract with HBO, then that leaves Hearn with just Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller and his British fighters. Some U.S boxing fans wouldn’t mind paying to see Amir Khan, Kell Brook and Anthony Joshua, but I doubt that a lot of them would. Joshua is with Showtime though, so even he might not be available. So what we’re talking about here is the need for Hearn to throw a lot of money at guys like Spence, Broner, Wilder, Danny Garcia, Mikey Garcia and Thurman for him to have a chance of being successful with his streaming service. As things are right now, it’s extremely doubtful that the U.S fans are going to want to pay to see Hearn’s British fighters. Hearn has a lot of fighters, but he doesn’t have a lot of talented guys that the U.S consumers will want to pay to see.

“This is a historic moment for Matchroom and the sport of boxing,” Hearn said to Fight News. Since our expansion to the US, we have been looking for a partner that shares our vision and that can give us the volume of dates and rights fees required to build the strongest stable in world boxing and take it to a new level.”

It’s unclear whether the American boxing fans can handle another subscription service at this point. The fans already pay extra to watch HBO and Showtime for their boxing. The same fans have to pay extra for PPV for what is often just one good fight. The undercards are usually mismatches involving an A-side fighter facing a hapless contender or worse.