SVG Sit-Down: DAZN's Zander Berlinski on the Quick International Success of NFL Game Pass The streaming company has helped the NFL grow its presence overseas By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Friday, December 13, 2024 - 2:47 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
A major goal of the NFL this season has been international expansion. That's evident by the increasing number of regular-season games played outside the U.S. This season, the league played five games off U.S. soil: one in Brazil, three in London, and another in Berlin.
With that international reach naturally came a rethinking of the league's overseas live-media rights and distribution. In the second year of a 10-year deal, the NFL relies on DAZN as distributor of live game coverage through add-on streaming product NFL Game Pass. Purchasing NFL Game Pass, DAZN subscribers get full access to every NFL game - regular season, playoffs, and the Super Bowl - making it a linchpin of the league's global ambitions.
SVG sat down with Zander Berlinski, SVP, strategy and business development, DAZN Group, to discuss the product's success since the NFL's international product migrated to its platform, what viewing tendencies he has noticed in international markets, and why this is an exciting trend for sports leagues of all sizes.
What are the highlights for DAZN in regard to the NFL Game Pass project?
It has been really good. We took over the product at the beginning of last season and grew the subscriber base over 30%, which was a great first-year result. We had a bunch of success on attracting new fans to the platform. From that perspective, this year is off to a similar year-over-year growth rate, which is great.
A couple key things have been very exciting from our perspective: innovating from a product perspective and bringing new features and benefits to customers to go beyond the streaming experience.
This year, we launched the Ultimate tier, sort of a second tier of the product. With it, you get certain benefits from a streaming perspective, whether that be UltraHD (when available) or Dolby 5.1 audio, and you also get certain benefits beyond the core streaming experience.
I think both DAZN and the NFL were excited about using the power of our platform and tech to create an experience that moves toward becoming sort of a digital home for an NFL fan internationally in all the various touchpoints that they want to engage with.
We launched NFL Game Pass on Amazon channels in six markets this season, which has helped increase the exposure of the product to reach new fans and allow them to watch it where they want to. Also, holistically, distribution - all the platforms we are on - was one of the main reasons the NFL wanted to come to DAZN, which was a significant increase relative to where they were. We continue to add platforms, and we're quite distribution-agnostic as a company.
How important are the NFL's international games for you and the product?
From a key-moments perspective, international games are a really big moment for us because they become cultural moments and go beyond the avid diehard NFL fan. It starts to engage the broader sports audience in those markets.
The Brazil game being added this year in Week One was a great one. Obviously, London and Germany, as always, were great, and the number of those games will increase in future years. We're excited about that.
The other big moments tend to correlate with the overall NFL calendar. Thanksgiving, granted it is a U.S. holiday, has appeal internationally from an NFL-calendar perspective, given the focus on the matchups and the three games being on Thursday in a good time zone for most of the main European audience.
Have any regions or markets where the NFL hasn't physically visited yet surprised you in their interest in NFL Game Pass?
We've seen good uptake in Mexico. They've had a game there in the past, and the league may try to go back there in the future, but Mexico has been really strong.
To your point, where we've also seen strength - I think this correlates not necessarily to NFL interests but also speaks to some of the broader strategic narratives of why they wanted to come into DAZN - is in our core markets. Those are markets like Japan, Italy, Spain, where we own the core domestic broadcast for a lot of the Tier 1 sports. In Germany, we have Bundesliga and Champions League; in Japan, we have the J League and a good portion of their domestic baseball teams. We promote pretty heavily to those users and give, in certain instances, special promotions through CRM or on platform.
I think the scale of our base internationally was one of the main reasons the NFL wanted to come do this partnership with us. They had done a very good job over eight-10 years building a platform that, on an independent basis, found a lot of the diehard NFL fans who were seeking it out, but, to get to the next level of growth, they felt it would be difficult to grow on a pure standalone basis. Inside a broader sports ecosystem, where we have millions of subscribers on the app each day, we can promote the app. That was a quite appealing part of the partnership.
Speaking broadly, what have you learned about international consumers of the NFL that is different from those who have grown up with the NFL in the U.S.?
It's interesting. I think there are probably a couple different cohorts that you can think about. There is a cohort that is quite similar to the U.S. audience. Those are diehard fans, whether expats who live abroad or people who grew up following the game because of a relative. Those fans were on the product already when we migrated it or are coming in Day 1 of the season. They're getting the product because they want to make sure they don't miss every game or the games of a specific team.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
SVG Sit-Down: DAZN's Zander Berlinski on the Quick International Success of NFL Game Pass The streaming company has helped the NFL grow its presence overseas By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
