Broadcaster DAZN has removed its paywall for its entire women’s football portfolio in the UK for the remainder of the 2023-24 season.
All Women’s Champions League fixtures will be free to air, along with the top tiers in Spain, Germany, France, Italy and Saudi Arabia.
DAZN says the change has been made to “increase audience and drive growth” as part of the its new women’s football strategy.
The remaining 29 matches in this season’s Champions League will be broadcast for free in the UK, along with 48 from Liga F fixtures, 48 Frauen Bundesliga fixtures, 19 in D1 Arkema, 50 from Serie A Femminile and 15 Saudi Women’s Premier League matches.
UEFA announced a four-year exclusive broadcast partnership with DAZN and YouTube ahead of the 2021-22 season, marking the competition’s first global broadcast deal.
All 61 matches were free to air during the first two years of the broadcast deal, and the plan had been to move all but 19 games behind a paywall from the 2023-24 campaign onwards, but this has now been scrapped.
On the decision to remove the paywall, a DAZN statement on Wednesday read: “This will drive audience growth and provide a new global home for women’s football, offering greater access to games, content and the international women’s football community,” adding it is part of its new campaign to “ensure a commercially robust future for women’s football”.
DAZN added a broadcast deal with Liga F ahead of the 2022-23 campaign, before deals with D1 Arkema, the Frauen Bundesliga, Serie A Femminile and the Saudi Women’s Premier League followed in 2023.
DAZN said it could not “necessarily distinguish subscription numbers and who subscribed for what content” when asked about viewing and subscription figures this season, but pointed to a year-on-year growth in unique viewers and watch time since the launch of the DAZN Women’s Football YouTube channel in October 2021. It added the growth of free to air content is a “pillar” in its long-term strategy.
The 2021-22 Champions League final between Lyon and Barcelona drew 3.6million global viewers, taking DAZN’s total views for its inaugural season of coverage to 64million, while the 2022-23 final between Barcelona and Wolfsburg attracted an audience 5.1million. Both games were available globally on DAZN’s platforms and on YouTube.
In November, TNT Sports announced it had agreed a UK sublicense deal with DAZN that would see a selection of matches from the Women’s Champions League, Frauen Bundesliga, Liga F and D1 Arkema broadcast on its channels, including Champions League quarter-finals, semi-finals and final.
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(Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
2024-01-17 14:43:18
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