Insights from Robin Kolmel
In the space of six years, the DAZN brand has become a household name in the sports over-the-top (OTT) video streaming sector. Whether it’s coverage from football’s top leagues in major markets, or its unique partnership with boxing’s leading promoters, the company’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) arm continues to develop a diverse media rights portfolio, covering more than 200 countries.
In addition to the OTT platform, since its launch in 2016, DAZN also has a rights partnership department to support sporting federations. Among others, DAZN’s dedicated rights partnerships with several major sports properties include notably the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).
Further demonstrating its versatility, this also includes a 10-year joint venture struck in 2018 with the European Handball Federation (EHF), alongside the sports marketing agency, Infront. In its first season, between September 2020 and June 2021, the partnership helped increase the EHF’s digital reach by more than 204 percent. Since the partnership’s July 2020 start date, the federation has also seen membership for its dedicated EHFTV streaming service expand to almost 390,000 registrations.
Going forward, having put the wheels in motion on EHF’s digital roadmap through 2030, ahead of its upcoming 2022/23 men’s and women’s EHF campaigns, the organizer for Europe’s premier handball competitions is focusing its new-found online popularity on accelerating the production of EHF’s short- and long-form shoulder content, including the production of athlete- and club-led documentaries shown via its digital channels.
Speaking on the partnership, Robin Kolmel, Managing Director and Head of Digital Marketing for DAZN’s EHF rights partnership, discussed with N3XT Sports the unique opportunities that the collaboration presents the three parties involved, including the creation of video content that continues to persuade younger audiences to watch handball and will help establish EHF’s place among a new age of owned-content distribution.
1. What was the motivation behind DAZN’s partnership with EHF and Infront? And what does the future hold for this specific partnership?
We see a lot of potential in handball as a sport, which is very popular in a lot of European regions, including Scandinavia, Germany, France, and Hungary. We can call it a more niche sport in other countries, so we see a lot of potential in growing the sport. These types of partnerships incorporate a long-term strategy designed to develop and grow the sport and that’s exactly what we’re doing with EHF in this case.
Everybody knows DAZN the OTT service but, within the global rights partnership division, it’s a little bit different. We tend to work with small and medium-sized federations across their media and marketing operations, and to expand their digital expertise. Perhaps, in hindsight, July 2020 wasn’t the best time to start the partnership – because of the Covid-19 impact.
Nevertheless, we were able to grow the EHF’s digital reach by 204 percent in just the first season and to implement their digital strategy, including the management of their OTT platform, EHFTV. I don’t think there are many who are as experienced as DAZN in this space. Overall, the goal is always to grow the reach of the sport. We ran a European-wide fan survey that included more than 50,000 participants before the start of the partnership and the results confirm that handball is a sport with a lot of potential.
It’s fast-paced, features a lot of goals, a lot of action, and is relatively short (60 minutes of game action). Although it holds a lot of good values, the sport has had the problem that it doesn’t reach enough people, and this is where we come in. We help the federation reach more people, especially digitally, via content creation and OTT management. This is helping the EHF reach a broader, younger audience and us to increase the value of the media rights.
2. So, naturally, digital content plays a key role here. Can you tell us more about why it’s so important?
We work with a great team at the EHF and together, as part of the overall partnership, we have created different types of content. We’re able to take ordinary handball clips and work together with content creators, the players, and influencers to try to reach a different audience. It’s a small thing but really helps the content reach a different level.
We are focusing at the moment on two types of shoulder content. We are producing more than 5,000 videos for the federation over a season. That includes a lot of match and player highlights. As DAZN, we bring a state-of-the-art tech stack to a partnership, which is one of the major advantages for a federation. We are able to create automated highlight clips, for example, while we are also concentrating now a lot more on the content around the matches – such as documentaries – with our production team in Madrid and try to help connect the federation with audiences in additional ways.
For example, we supported the creation of EHF TikTok videos which reached more than 100 million people and we have also done a lot of work on the creation of Instagram reels. Both of these platforms are on the up, particularly among younger audiences, so we try to create additional ways to reel those new audiences into the sport. This also covers meme content, comic videos that feature anime, and is an area we will continue to focus more on during the coming season.
3. Can you touch on DAZN’s digital content production suite in Madrid and its role within your rights holder partnerships. Why did you decide to explore this?
At DAZN, we don’t usually go the normal route. We don’t only buy and sell media rights, which is of course an important part of our job. But our role is also to help the federation grow the sport. We know so much about how media consumption is changing and how we can impact audiences through the content we create. This includes a special team of content creators and digital experts in Madrid.
This is where we see the future of sports consumption, especially among younger audiences where we have to reel people in and show them that handball is actually as cool as football and basketball and showcase the other possibilities that are out there. We reach far more people via these digital channels. This gives us the option, via the fan funnel, to then reel them into the sport with more highlight clips and to watch the games via the OTT platform, EHFTV, or our official broadcast partners in each market. The platform now has close to 390,000 registrations, which for a service that is not shown in most traditional handball markets, but in other emerging handball markets, is an incredible feat.
4. Staying on the digital content topic, what types of content do handball audiences want to consume? And how does EHF’s VOD content perform compared to its live streams?
Within DAZN, we have expertise across the continent. I’m based in Madrid, but we can draw on our team and their knowledge in lots of different markets. As a result, we are able to cross-promote sports and draw on expertise that federations might not have. For example, there could be an influencer we work with for FIBA and invite them to a handball game. This showcases the power of a service like DAZN to give the federations we work with an overall view of the market.
One thing that works really well is a documentary featuring players and coaches. For example, our documentary featuring the Polish handball team, Kielce, received award recognition with a small budget and a small production team. That’s because they had an interesting story to tell, and this is something that we are really lacking in handball. People like the sport and like to watch the live games, but to connect further with the players and the great stories of the sport, this is an important area of focus.
“Our aim is to take the federation’s knowledge and combine it with DAZN’s knowledge. This is the win-win situation we strive for and will help grow the audience and the sport. The federation is the one which knows their stakeholders, what their fans want to consume. What we can help them with, for example, is testing new methods via social media and the types of content that the federation isn’t usually able to create by themselves.”
5. What role do handball players and fans play when it comes to creating digital content, including for EHF’s partners?
Handball players are extremely important. There are so many great characters and so many great stories. Fans really appreciate it and at the big tournaments like the EHF Final Four there is an incredible atmosphere. It is part of our job to make that visible to a broader audience and the digital landscape is making it easier to put this content out there. When it comes to our commercial partners, we create a lot of branded content for sponsors such as Lidl or Gorenje during the last EHF European Championships. This is one of our focus points to integrate sponsors into digital activations like handball filter games and match highlights.
As we’ve already discussed, our tech stack enables us to create these automated clips and highlights. Furthermore, we’ve found a way to automatically distribute 85 percent of EHF content to all the federations within the sport, all of the clubs, a lot of the players, and other stakeholders. This includes the media, rights holder websites, influencers, player channels, and so on. This helps to amplify and spread the content, giving the EHF a bigger, automatic audience reach. That’s where we see the most organic growth occurring.
For example, we had a nice piece about a Norwegian player which we sent to the domestic broadcast, NENT, and registered almost one million views on their OTT platform, Viaplay. This is an area where we can not only help produce the content but also distribute the content on the digital side. There is a saying I have been using for the past four years that says: ‘Content is king, but distribution is queen’. Nowadays, it’s not enough to have great content. It’s also about how we choose to distribute it, on which platforms, and in which countries.
6. What value do federations such as the EHF, FIBA or WTA offer a partnership like this? And what’s coming next?
Our aim is to take the federation’s knowledge and combine it with DAZN’s knowledge. This is the win-win situation we strive for and will help grow the audience and the sport. The federation is the one which knows their stakeholders, what their fans want to consume. What we can help them with, for example, is testing new methods via social media and the types of content that the federation isn’t usually able to create by themselves. We have the internal knowledge to support the federation – but it always has to be a collaborative effort. DAZN is here to support the EHF on the creation and distribution of handball content to grow the sport.
We must always have an eye out for what’s happening on the competition calendar. Overall, we can see where we’re having an impact and where we can adapt in coming seasons. There are four pillars we’re focused on next season to create additional bonds with the federation. These include: (1) long-form content; (2) short-form content; (3) user-created content; and (4) gamification.
Even if you don’t have a massive budget to create the next big game for Nintendo Switch, there are ways to have a deeper connection with the fan, in particular around content outside the live production. That’s an important point for generating engagement between and around the matches. Bringing fans closer to the sport in this way is something we’re looking into more in the long-term but also very much in the short-term, too, including for the coming EHF season.