This Saturday’s Women’s Champions’ League final, between Barcelona and Wolfsburg at the Philips Stadium in Eindhoven, will bring the curtain down on fully free-to-air viewing of the annual competition.
Broadcaster DAZN is preparing to move to a mixed pay-to-view/free model from the 2023/24 season, continuing its partnership with YouTube for the free sections of the schedule.
DAZN claims to be Europe’s “biggest digital sports broadcaster” following the 2019 opening of its Leeds broadcast centre, where around 300 staff handle most of its streaming services.
In July 2021, it signed global broadcast rights for the WCL from UEFA from the 2021/22 until 2024/25. The deal excluded the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – where rights do include clips and highlights – and China and its territories.
Under the terms of the deal, DAZN said at the time of signing: “For the first two seasons (2021-23), fans will be able to watch live and on demand all 61 matches from the group stage onwards on DAZN and free on DAZN’s YouTube channel. For the last two seasons (2023-25), all 61 matches will be live on DAZN while 19 matches will be made available for free on DAZN’s YouTube channel.”
According to a report in The Guardian, DAZN has now confirmed the move to the new mixed model later this year, with full access available via the company’s subscription service, at a cost of £9.99 a month, and 19 games remaining free on DAZN’s YouTube channel – including the final, quarter-finals and semi-finals and 12 from across the group stage. The YouTube channel boasts 621,000 subscribers, and DAZN said that last year’s competition brought a total of 14m extra viewers to the channel.
Quoted in the paper, DAZN’s global markets chief executive, Veronica Diquattro, said: “We have been growing the visibility of the WCL thanks to our partnership with YouTube. Now the time is right to convert this visibility into viability and value for the long-term sustainability of the rights. Driving the commercial value upwards is how we can make sure there will be future investment in the sport for the benefit of the game and the players. And it’s also in the interest of the clubs and UEFA as well.”
The arrangements for screening of the games may not yet be entirely set in stone just yet, however. In the days leading up to the 2022 final between Barcelona and Lyon, DAZN announced a host of free-to-air sub-licencing deals with traditional broadcasters including ITV in the UK, TF1 in France, RTVE and TV3 in Spain, RTBF in Belgium, SVT Sweden, NRK Norway, Sport5 Israel, and RUV Iceland.
