23rd October 2025
October 23 – DAZN’s next big play will surely light the blue touchpaper to the fiercest bidding war since BT and Sky Sports put on the gloves for the rights to the Premier League in 2023.
The Saudi-backed streaming platform is preparing to enter the race for the crown jewel of European football, the UEFA Champions League, and the tournament’s 2027 global rights.
The new tender process, launched this month by UEFA and its commercial partner UC³, has created an environment where the ‘single global rights package’ is available for the first time. The winner of these rights would then control the first-pick Tuesday match in every market, meaning that the marquee game would always be theirs. It has been estimated that this match is valued at around $450 million per year, or close to $2 billion for the four-year cycle.
For UEFA, it’s an experiment in consolidation. For broadcasters, it’s a battle for dominance in the future of sports streaming.
Thanks to the Saudi Arabian investment of $1 billion through Surj Sports earlier this year, DAZN is positioned to strike, and after paying the same amount to FIFA for the Club World Cup rights, DAZN sees the Champions League as the ideal vehicle to further push into the dog-eat-dog world of sports broadcasting.
This aggressive approach does come with some strategic belt-tightening, though. The platform has cancelled domestic TV deals with both Ligue 1 and the Jupiler League in France and Belgium respectively, saving the company a reported €1.5 billion.
DAZN, which has lost billions since its inception, reportedly wants to be profitable by 2026.
This fight for rights includes the big three of streaming, Netflix, Amazon, and Disney+, who are all rumoured to be interested in UEFA’s offer. This new digital frontier of football will be decided not on the pitch, but in a boardroom bidding war between Silicon Valley and Riyadh-backed ambition.