DAZN hopes Fifa Club World Cup will replicate appeal of March Madness in the US
DAZN hopes the 2025 Fifa Club World Cup (CWC) will attract viewers and advertisers in the US by replicating the appeal of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) March Madness college basketball tournament.
Fifa’s expanded international club soccer competition will see 32 club teams from around the world compete in 63 matches held at 12 stadiums across the US across a 29-day period.
DAZN, which was recently the subject of a US$1 billion investment from the Saudi-backed SURJ, is paying US$1 billion for the global rights and will make matches free-to-air (FTA) to attract more users into its ecosystem.
This includes in the US, where DAZN is also sublicensing select matches to Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and TelevisaUnivision’s linear networks.
Walker Jacobs, global chief revenue officer at DAZN, told SportsPro New York he believed the wide variety of participants, a condensed tournament schedule, and lack of competition from other major events would help drive viewership in the host nation.
“A lot of our advertisers have noted [The CWC] comes after the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) seasons and is being held when most major [European] soccer leagues are taking the summer off,” Jacobs said.
“The Gold Cup and regular season Major League Baseball (MLB) are happening but it’s a pretty open calendar.
“The tournament is being played across major cities in the US and my hope is that it takes on a similar excitement level to March Madness where you see upsets where teams with smaller payrolls and fanbases [defeating larger clubs] – it’s going to be incredibly exciting.
“If you think of soccer as a four-year cycle that includes the men’s World Cup, women’s World Cup and the Olympics – the [CWC] is the final piece of the puzzle.”
DAZN has secured sublicensing deals with broadcasters in other territories in a bid to drive awareness and offset some costs. Agreements with CazeTV in Brazil and Mediaset in Italy have already been struck.
SportsPro says…
It would be easy to mock DAZN’s comparison. The expanded CWC is a tournament that has struggled to win support in traditional soccer nations, never mind a country where the sport has only recently established itself as a mainstream proposition. Meanwhile, March Madness is one of the most storied events in American sport, a much loved tradition that dates back nearly a century.
But DAZN isn’t suggesting the CWC will be anything like March Madness in terms of viewing figures or impact on popular culture. It is merely speculating that the CWC might possess many of the qualities that makes college basketball so beloved.
While name, image and likeness (NIL) deals and the transfer portal have diluted some of college basketball’s appeal, its ‘Big Dance’ sees schools of all sizes and levels of ability compete against one another. This contrasts with most major US sports leagues, which are franchise-based, salary cap-governed, and limited to just a small pool of participants. ‘Cinderella stories’ are feted just as much as multi-time champions, and the tournament is a national obsession each Spring, just before the NBA and NHL postseasons come into view.
DAZN believes the prospect of diverse teams from around the world – including the US – taking on much better-resourced giants from Europe during a month-long period will tap into that same demand.
While it remains to be seen how successful the competition will be given the antipathy from players, clubs and fans in Europe, it’s now a bit clearer how DAZN plans to position it. Globally, the streamer will have the highest profile competitive soccer action for a whole month, while in the US it will have something entirely new to offer fans.