LOS ANGELES — For years, DAZN has been best known to American sports fans as a destination for boxing and combat sports. Around the world, however, the streaming platform has established itself as one of the largest sports broadcasters, carrying everything from European soccer and Formula One to the NFL and NHL.
Now, with the Los Angeles Kings among a growing collection of professional sports teams calling DAZN their local streaming home, the company is making an aggressive push into the United States with ambitions that extend far beyond regional sports television.
Walker Jacobs, DAZN's global chief revenue officer and president of DAZN USA, told The Sporting Tribune in an exclusive interview that the company's recent expansion into regional sports is only the first step in a much larger strategy to establish itself as a leading sports broadcaster in the United States.
"Our strategy was never and is not still to be a regional sports broadcaster," Jacobs said. "That's not what our strategy is. Our strategy is to be a leading sports broadcaster, full stop."
In the past six months, the London-based company has acquired local streaming rights involving 19 professional teams across Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL and WNBA. The collection includes franchises such as the Kings, Memphis Grizzlies, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, New York Knicks and New York Yankees.
For DAZN, the opportunity emerged as the traditional regional sports television model continued to experience financial difficulties, leaving teams searching for new distribution partners and fans wondering where they would be able to watch their favorite teams.
"Regional sports presented itself as a really attractive opportunity for us to get a foothold in several key U.S. markets," Jacobs said. "The rights became available. There was another major company that was involved that hit some financial trouble. There was a season that was about to start and teams had to make quick decisions."
That combination of circumstances allowed DAZN to enter markets that might otherwise have taken years to penetrate.
"What we hope this does is get millions of people using our product that have not used our product before," Jacobs said. "We believe that we have the best sports streaming product in the world. And we believe that once somebody comes on and starts using our product and tries our product, it's really hard to go back."
The Kings represent an important piece of that strategy in Southern California.
Beginning with the 2026-27 NHL season, DAZN became the exclusive direct-to-consumer streaming home for available locally televised Kings games through a partnership with Angels Broadcast Television (ABTV). Fans within the team's local television territory can watch games through DAZN with a direct subscription or, where eligible, authenticate using an existing television provider.
The service also includes pregame and postgame coverage, original programming and additional Kings-related content designed to give fans a more comprehensive experience than simply watching games.
Jacobs said the Kings partnership illustrates how DAZN hopes to differentiate itself from traditional regional sports networks while taking advantage of the company's enormous international reach.
DAZN distributes NHL.TV in most countries outside the United States and Canada, giving international subscribers access to NHL games through a single streaming product. While its Kings partnership is focused on Southern California, its relationship with the NHL creates a separate connection to hockey fans around the world.
"We have a local relationship with the team through our relationship with ABTV," Jacobs said. "On top of that, we have a relationship with the NHL for NHL.TV that's in most countries in the world."
"While we don't have a national broadcast partnership in the U.S. or Canada right now with the NHL, we're kind of bookending that with the local package we have with ABTV and then with the international package we have with NHL.TV."
The international reach is something few regional sports broadcasters can match.
DAZN carries major European soccer properties, including Serie A in Italy, Bundesliga in Germany and La Liga in Spain, along with Formula One in Spain. The company also has international NFL distribution rights and operates FIFA's streaming platform globally.
Jacobs, who oversees both DAZN's U.S. operations and its global revenue business, said the company has become one of the largest sports media companies in approximately 10 or 11 countries.
That global infrastructure provides an advantage as American professional sports leagues increasingly look beyond their domestic markets to grow their audiences.
But Jacobs emphasized that DAZN's immediate priority is much simpler: Make sure fans can find their games and watch them without problems.
That has become an increasingly complicated proposition for American sports fans as games migrate from traditional cable television to a growing number of streaming services.
In Los Angeles alone, fans have watched teams move across different platforms and distribution arrangements, sometimes without knowing where games would be available until shortly before a season begins.
Jacobs acknowledged the confusion surrounding the rapidly changing sports media landscape.
"I would agree with you. It feels a little all over the place sometimes," Jacobs said. "At the end of the day, the world's changing. How consumers are watching sports is changing and streaming is becoming a more and more important part of the mix."
DAZN has responded with an extensive marketing and communications strategy designed to educate fans about where they can watch games.
The company is working with teams to promote streaming availability through arena signage, email campaigns, digital advertising and other team-controlled platforms. It is also using paid media campaigns in each market to promote specific games and encourage subscriptions.
Jacobs believes some of the initial confusion will disappear once consumers become familiar with the platform.
"Change is always disruptive and change is always hard and it's always confusing," Jacobs said. "There'll always be people that say I wish it was the way it used to be. And that's a tale as old as time."
One of the ways DAZN hopes to convince fans to embrace that change is by offering more than live games.
The Kings' dedicated page on DAZN includes team programming and original content produced through ABTV, creating a destination for fans looking for more extensive coverage of the franchise.
For a team competing for attention in a crowded Los Angeles sports market, that additional programming could become an important part of the viewing experience.
"It's hugely important," Jacobs said. "That comes from our relationship with ABTV. I think they've really done a great job with their programming and their content strategy. In this particular case with the Kings, I think we're the beneficiary of that."
DAZN also plans to supplement its regional sports offerings with original programming of its own.
One upcoming project is a show featuring former NHL enforcer Ty Domi, scheduled to debut later this hockey season. The series will feature conversations with prominent athletes and entertainers, including Tom Brady, Mark Wahlberg, Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O'Neal and Wayne Gretzky.
Jacobs believes programming like that can introduce hockey to a wider audience while giving existing fans additional reasons to spend time on the platform.
"What we're trying to do is figure out how all the parts come together to create something really interesting and really attractive to all types of fans," Jacobs said. "Having NHL legends sort of harken back to the glory days, and some of the great years that the Kings have had, we think is going to be a lot of fun."
The strategy also creates opportunities for DAZN to introduce fans of one sport to other sports they might not have previously followed.
Someone who subscribes to watch the Kings could eventually discover boxing, international soccer or original programming on the same platform. A basketball fan subscribing to watch the Spurs or Knicks could similarly become exposed to DAZN's broader sports portfolio.
That approach is central to the company's long-term growth plans.
DAZN has already strengthened its American boxing business through expanded relationships with Top Rank and Premier Boxing Champions while maintaining partnerships with Golden Boy Promotions and Matchroom.
Jacobs described those investments as a deliberate effort to make DAZN more relevant to American sports fans even before the company's regional sports expansion.
Now, with millions of potential new customers coming through its local team partnerships, DAZN hopes to use that increased audience to pursue additional programming and rights agreements.
"We want to attract more teams and more regional rights," Jacobs said. "If the leagues decide that they want to find a single solution to create a national solution for local rights, we want to be the obvious choice for them to go with."
That possibility could become increasingly significant as professional sports leagues evaluate whether to continue relying on individual local television agreements or pursue broader national distribution models for games that have traditionally been televised regionally.
Jacobs sees DAZN's current partnerships as an opportunity to demonstrate to leagues, teams and fans that the company can successfully handle those responsibilities.
"We hope that this year sort of gives us a trial run to demonstrate how great our product is and how much fans love it and how much our team partners respect working with us and vice versa," Jacobs said.
For now, however, Jacobs insists the company's most important responsibility is delivering a reliable experience for fans who simply want to watch their teams play.
"I think we have an order of operations of what the most important priorities are for us," Jacobs said. "The first and foremost is to deliver the live games with a great production quality, a great consumer experience, seamlessly and flawlessly."
Only after establishing that foundation does DAZN intend to focus on expanding engagement through on-demand programming, studio shows and additional sports rights.
"If we do that really well, I think we're going to have happy fans, happy consumers, happy customers, and happy partners," Jacobs said.
For Kings fans, the immediate impact is a new way to watch their team and access additional programming. For DAZN, the partnership represents something much larger: An entry point into one of the world's most valuable and competitive sports media markets.
And Jacobs made it clear that the company has no intention of stopping with the teams it has already signed.
"We've made it clear to all of our league partners around the world and all the major rights holders here in the U.S. that we want to be an important part of their consideration set moving forward," Jacobs said. "Our ambitions are much, much bigger than sort of being one-dimensional."
For a company that American sports fans once associated primarily with boxing, the Kings and DAZN's other regional sports partnerships could ultimately be remembered as the beginning of a much bigger transformation.