It’s been a few months now since Foxtel long desired to put themselves into the shop market by News Corp and Telstra and earlier today, they seem to have struck a takeover deal in sports streaming giant DAZN worth $3.4 billion. That means, DAZN will take over nearly of Foxtel’s business assets with Sky News remaining under News Corp (since News will still hold a small share of the company and not Telstra altogether due to Foxtel’s refinancing structure) while both News Corp and Telstra will each be buying a small cut in return of DAZN.
So looks like Fox Sports Australia including its Fox League (NRL), Fox Footy (AFL) and Fox Cricket cable channels is here to stay, at least for now.
It remains to be seen what will happen with Foxtel’s sports-only streaming service Kayo when DAZN has their own paid streaming platform here as well as their entertainment-only streaming platform Binge, Maybe DAZN might as well either get rid of entertainment, keep everything sports related with or without the Kayo name & have it sold off or merge with Kayo and rename to whatever they want to call it as said above in their quest to rival the real Netflix where they would offer their customers a basic entertainment option with separate add-on access to watch Fox Sports like Stan & Paramount.
Yes, it feels like Comcast buying Sky UK a few years ago back in 2018 off News Corp too when Sky Sports used to feel like being UK’s FOX Sports for so long but that brand is still around today albeit with under the umbrella of NBC Sports in the US – such as Premier League Football, the National Football League (Gridiron) and Golf. Now we are seeing the same thing over in Australia today, although Fox Sports will still have a role here unlike the US and even the UK where you have so many major sports networks competing against each other.
In terms of sports rights, they now have the ability to gain access including all our major sporting codes, acquire more content both here and across other markets to spread the word more about their brand under the one roof and potentially retain them considering their huge success worldwide for a number of years now across the UK, North America, Europe and Asia.
Although with a number of other major Australian sports rights up in the air, it remains to be seen as to whether or not if this will be beneficial to their business like the Supercars Championship in 12 months’ time and the National Rugby League competition come the end of 2027. You never know like Netflix did the other day with the exclusive 2027 & 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer rights they took way from FOX (at least separately) for the US market as for now, DAZN is making big waves while News Corp has its run after 30 years when the revolutionary cable TV era expanded even more back in 1995.