Italy: DAZN streams 81m hours in first year
May 30, 2019
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Streaming platform DAZN has published the first figures for its Italian operations, which launched last year.
Over 2,600 events were broadcast for a total of 81 million hours, of which 91 per cent were aired live and 9 per cent on demand. Of the total viewers 60 per cent are men, with Milan, Rome and Naples being the cities where DAZN has most viewers.
In May 2019, 63 per cent of the viewing was on Smart TV, set-top box or console (compared to only 38 per cent in August 2018), 22 per cent on mobile devices (smartphone and tablet) and 15 per cent from web browsers.
No information was given regarding subscriber figuress, although daily Il Sole 24 Ore speculates that the figure is around the 1.5 million mark.
According of Veronica Diquattro, Executive VP for Southern Europe, DAZN has been continuously working to improve the service, releasing at least two updates per month for its app. The average re-buffering time has been reduced by 66 per cent and the percentage of viewers who could watch events in HD has constantly increased.
She added that DAZN is working with the Italian government and ISPs to improve broadband infrastructure and is also in regular contact with other relevant players such as Netflix, Amazon, Chili and Sky.
Football is by far the most popular sport aired by DAZN (mainly Italy’s Serie A and Serie B), followed by the NFL, rugby and volleyball.