Eddie Hearn reflects on how DAZN helped Matchroom ring in new era of boxing

LONDON – Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing have announced an extension of their current broadcast deal with streaming service DAZN.

Matchroom first put pen-to-paper with DAZN back in 2018, signing a five-year deal to air their US shows on the platform. Hearn would later decide to work exclusively with DAZN following Matchroom’s and Sky Sports’ long-term broadcast deal coming to an end. Matchroom then signed a three-year extension to their deal with DAZN back in 2023, which was due to expire this year.

Hearn had told BoxingScene back in December that it was likely that Matchroom and DAZN would extend their partnership, and it has now become official. Today (February 18), Hearn and Matchroom hosted a red carpet event to announce their five-year contract extension with the broadcaster. The deal will see Matchroom show a minimum of 30 shows a year on the platform until 2031, but Hearn believes that number will be closer to 40.

“The offering to subscribers and the potential that we have moving forward, I'd be an idiot to look at anything else,” said Hearn of DAZN. “In boxing you can be a great promoter but without a great broadcaster, or a broadcast deal, you're nothing. But when you're a great promoter with a great broadcaster, in my opinion, you're unstoppable, and our passion is the fighters that we represent.

“That is what we absolutely live for and we have to deliver for our fighters, but to do that you need a liquidity of dates and you need a long-term deal. So every fighter we represent knows that we have five more years of 30 [shows a year] and that's a minimum of 30, right. Now we want 40. We want 200 shows over the next five years and we can only do that with DAZN, who I think are the most unbelievable, remarkable platform I've ever worked with.”

Hearn faced some obstruction from the other mainstream promotional outfits in the UK when he first took over the running of Matchroom Boxing from his father Barry Hearn. He again faced stiff opposition when he first signed with DAZN in 2018 with his rival promoters in the US playing down the streaming service as nothing but an app that nobody would watch. That has now changed, with DAZN becoming the leading broadcaster in the modern boxing landscape.

“These bastards, when I was in the UK, do you remember they all got together, they all put their hand in the middle and said we're gonna drive Eddie Hearn out of the UK and then I went to America and they were all at it. Leonard Ellerbe, Stephen Espinosa, Bob Arum, Lou DiBella, ‘Let's get him out,’ and we're still there. Last time I checked, God knows where they are, but that's another story. But that's called staying power, that's called ambition and that's called consistency, but that's also called having a great partner,” said Hearn.

“When things weren't quite working in the early days, we stayed with it, we adapted, we got smart and now look at [DAZN] go. Look at the schedule, it's incredible, incredible on every side of the Atlantic.

“This deal also includes with their new partners, Fox Sport in Australia, seven shows a year in Australia, which is a very important market for us. Obviously we have Mexico, the key markets of the UK, America, Monaco, Belgium, potentially Turkey coming up, there's no end to what we want to do and we're very proud to sit here today knowing that we have that stability in our business and for our fighters moving forward.”

The early days on DAZN were a battle for Hearn and the broadcaster trying to convince the leading names of the sport to ditch the mainstream stations of ESPN and Showtime to come over and fight on a new streaming service.

“The resistance early on was so fierce,” Hearn recalled. “It was like, you talk to a fighter, I would have a meeting with, I don't know, Charlo, and it would be unbelievable. I'd leave the meeting and go, ‘He's signing,’ and then he'd phone me up, and I was like, ‘I've been talking to Al [Haymon] and Al says that this DAZN thing is just no good, it'll ruin my career. I'm like, ‘Fuck.’ We just couldn't get the hook. Probably the hook was Devin Haney originally. He was our first big signing. Then ‘Boots’ Ennis was a massive signing as well. Obviously, the development with ‘Bam’ Rodriguez. Seeing Dmitry Bivol grow into a pound-for-pound star as well. Working with a little bit of Shakur Stevenson.

The man that really got the ball rolling for Hearn in the States was the signing of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in 2022.

“The Canelo Alvarez partnership was massive for us,” Hearn said. “We did, what, seven fights with him, and that really changed, not just the profile of Matchroom, but my profile in America. I was walking down the street with Mexicans coming up to me saying, ‘Yes, Canelo!’ I'd go to Mexico for our smaller shows and I was getting mobbed. That really helped us grow and get respect, because when we had Canelo, the other fighters were saying, ‘Canelo went to him. You told me this guy is a clown.’

“So, I think now, we have to say that we are the number one promotional company in America and I think we don't get enough credit for that, being a British promotional company. So, if we're going to continue, there's going to be a lot of ups and downs, but I've signed up for another five years. I'm going to be 51 or so, and after that I'll probably do a fucking 10-year deal.”