Successful Delivery: DAZN's Danielle Carey on the Journey to Bringing Exciting Sports Content to Fans Around the World

Successful delivery: DAZN's Danielle Carey on the journey to bringing exciting sports content to fans around the world By Heather McLean, Editor

Monday, March 21, 2022 - 13:38

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DAZN's Danielle Carey, head of resources in programming

DAZN's Danielle Carey, head of resources in programming, is also responsible for the successful delivery of some of DAZN's most high-profile content. On how she first found out about TV broadcasting as a career, she says: A chat with my careers advisor when I was 17 made me realise that it was possible to combine my passion for sports with TV and film.

I hadn't ever considered that it was a realistic option for me to be able to work in an industry that had fascinated me since I was a child with my passion for getting outside and playing sport. To be able to work day to day with the athletes, teams, and federations I had spent hours watching on the TV seemed like the greatest job in the world!

Gaining experience

Carey studied Film and Visual Arts at Leicester University as she thought a degree in film would look better on her CV and would put her in a good position for a job in the field she wanted to pursue. She says: I spent the last few months of my degree sending letters to as many production companies as I could find trying to get any relevant work experience, and was lucky enough to spend a month working on a documentary project with the Discovery channel. It was unpaid but worth every minute and opened the door to many other opportunities I was then able to pursue.

It is incredibly fulfilling to see a project through from conversations and ideas in a boardroom, to its fruition at a stadium surrounded by 80,000 cheering fans knowing many more are watching from home

When Carey first started out in her career, she says she took lots of short-term contracts to try and gain as much experience as possible. She worked on shows including Masterchef and Cash in the Attic, before starting a permanent role on the Trisha Goddard show, all of which allowed her to work in studio environments and learn the workflows for getting content into a TV schedule.

She comments: My first full time job was as a production assistant on The Trisha Goddard show, I initially started as an audience researcher working at the Maidstone Studios and after a few months was offered the chance to move to the main studio team based in Norwich to work on the live shows.

As the production coordinator I was responsible for organising travel and accommodation for the guests appearing on the five shows we filmed each week, and then ran the dressing room corridors on studio days, she continues. Whilst the role was very demanding with a busy studio schedule each week, and last-minute changes to the guest line up and topics covered, the role provided me with plenty of varied and unique opportunities.

However, it also highlighted that daytime TV was not where I saw my career developing and I wanted to find a role in sport that I could be more passionate about.

[The Trisha Goddard show] reinforced that sport was where I wanted to be, she notes. A role came up in sport broadcasting in 2007 and I've never looked back. Being able to combine my passion for sports and my love of broadcasting, travel and being outside still seems like a dream come true.

Don't be scared to take opportunities when they are presented to you, says DAZN's Danielle Carey

Sporting start

I joined Premium TV as a production coordinator working with commentators and editors to produce highlight content for Premier League Productions, before moving into a transmission role and learning satellite and broadcast workflows. I then moved to Perform where I worked as a commentary manager, setting up their facility and sourcing the talent to add live commentary to events in up to five different languages simultaneously. From there I took the opportunity to move back into production management and took the role as production manager and subsequently senior production manager for the newly formed outside broadcast team, and oversaw the logistics of our broadcast contracts with WTA, PSA and Premiership Rugby, she adds.

I have frequently been the only woman sitting around the table in a board room, working in countries where men still hold the most senior positions within a federation or broadcaster. This has led to often finding my opinion or thoughts only being considered seriously when someone else in the room has agreed with them

An opportunity to move across to DAZN came about when the broadcaster was still in its incubation period, back in 2015. Says Carey: It was a risk at the time as nobody knew whether it would work out, but I jumped at the chance to join something so revolutionary right from the beginning. I was part of the initial core team working to develop the service and was responsible for setting up the production in our new territories.

The role provided such a fantastic and diverse opportunity to develop my career, she goes on. I had a chance to work with a new group of incredibly talented people creating a brand-new service all of us with the same vision to pave a new way for customers to watch and interact with sport and their favourite teams whether that be football, tennis or boxing.

However, she adds: Everything was brand new; we were a new service, new client, new broadcaster, and that came with some challenges of its own. I was working in countries we had very little knowledge of, and each country provided unique opportunities for us to learn and develop new concepts. I spent the best part of five years on a plane, travelling to multiple countries to review potential new markets, and then once they were green lit, working as part of the wider team setting up and finding facilities, staff, equipment, learning how different fe

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