Floyd Mayweather recorded a win in Mexico city a short time ago in his rematch with John Gotti III.
A spectacle as it were, hard to make of what we saw.
DAZN’s broadcast was chaotic and suffered technical problems — again — this is still happening DAZN literally years on from launch — how garbage can their product be to keep having errors at this point?
Mayweather embraced boxing legend Julio Cesar Chavez a short time ago after the win:
Chavez, a true boxing legend.
One of the great sporting stories of Mexico.
As Mayweather said, he beat Roger Mayweather twice.
Upon balance and reasonable reflection, gathering all the facts, in all aspects, it was a very, very disappointing promotion indeed of the event from Mayweather and DAZN though. In truth, no one even knew this was happening, really.
What’s more, DAZN were mentioning the Victor Ortiz fight on social media and seemed to then show nothing about the result or what happened in the fight thereafter.
It is like they blacked out in their broadcast again. The information just went blank on social media.
The DAZN start-up has been around 8 years now since 2016 and still is plagued with technical problems like this.
It is little wonder so many people continue to leave the DAZN company in recent years whether it was John Skipper, their most recent CEOs (Joe Markowski left too) who have chucked in the job in recent years and more lately. How many senior management of DAZN have just chucked in their jobs in recent years? It has been well covered and analyzed at this stage in an accurate, factual manner, by appropriate parties.
The Ukrainian-born (Odessa) Mr. Len Blavatnik, a UK, US entrepreneur and philanthropist, who attended Moscow State university in his younger years but is of US citizenship (40 years plus) and UK citizenship (12 years plus), who (currently) owns DAZN, clearly doesn’t mind wasting a considerable amount of money, with respect, as well as hammering the company’s staff and management year on year particularly recently.
What is he doing at this point. Really though. It should work if the technical ailments are resolved on the platform, as well as hopefully better promotion.
Blavatnik is making a real mess out of what should have been a great idea in DAZN, credit to him for that and the idea but this is a golden age for boxing now, the opportunity for boxing and DAZN is right now.
Eddie Hearn and others need to give this Blavatnik a kick up the behind.
This DAZN platform has really angered some people not just involved in boxing now with the poor showing for Floyd’s event at the weekend, a man who has brought legendary fights to sports fans for more than twenty-plus years. A man who also elevated the sport to levels not seen ever in the sport, in association with Al Haymon, Richard Schaefer, Leonard Ellerbe, Nicole Craig and many others who worked very hard to bring boxing to levels it had not seen before in terms of viewership worldwide. And initially on free television in America at the inception of PBC which really got the ball rolling to get boxing going as a mainstream sport again.
Yes, Eddie Hearn and Matchroom got things going in the beginning in UK with stadium fights involving Carl Froch and George Groves (long before Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury came along, remember).
But actually, boxing’s boom initially traces back to before that even with Mayweather’s career when he became his own boss (and then, after that) PBC first (before anyone else) putting boxing on free linear TV in the United States. On many TV channels at the time too in America.
With respect, we believe both the promotion of the event and the social media blackouts in Mexico were disrespectful to Mr. Mayweather and the sport, and hopefully he (Mayweather himself too) can also do a better job in promoting his big boxing events. importantly featuring quite brilliant young fighters like Curmel Moton who is a new star in the sport — a bit better himself in the future too — working as a team more in distribution and marketing with more coordination and more technical efficiency with appropriate players involved.
We know that the appropriate people including London’s Barry Hearn, his excellency Turki Alalshikh and appropriate other parties and agents will give DAZN the rightful scolding and earful they need after this mess of an event (they have done other events very well though it should be noted for balance) — that frankly no one even knew a boxing legend in Mayweather was even participating in. It just wasn’t promoted well (by Mayweather either).
DAZN has been around since 2016 and still has much promise if both the technical, management and promotion aspects can be finally ironed out and made right.
In a truly, factual accurate manner again to say, it is a great year for the sport in 2024 and time again in general for boxing at the moment, where Netflix (in a transcending boxing sporting event) are showing boxing legend Mike Tyson vs entertainer and fighter Jake Paul on November 15th, the opportunity for DAZN to become the Netflix of sports is now. This year. Things, places and people that grow the sport of boxing are always welcome.
The opportunity is now to strike while the iron is hot and move forward in the years ahead again.
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