Australia’s Optus Sport teams with DAZN

Sports group DAZN has struck a content distribution partnership with Australian telco Optus’ sports streaming service.

DAZN’s newly launched cloud-native content distribution service, DAZN Connect, will deliver video IP back-up feeds to Optus Sport across its portfolio of sporting events.

Optus Sports has rights to the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Nations League and Premier League. DAZN Connect is also providing backup distribution services for all 52 games of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Optus Sport has seen strong audience figures in recent months, thanks to its coverage of events such as the Champions League final.

It marks a change in fortunes for Optus which suffered repeated disruptions to its streaming coverage of the 2018 World Cup and led to it sublicensing its rights to SBS, Australia’s free-to-air broadcaster.

The DAZN Connect partnership allows Optus Sport to diversify its distribution arrangements and also sees it using DAZN Connect’s IP-based delivery approach, providing resiliency and multiple back-up paths throughout the Optus Sport platforms.

Gareth Rees, SVP business development at DAZN Connect said: “We are seeing a real movement of more and more partners coming to us exploring using IP as both primary and back-ups paths. Credit to Optus for their innovative strategy as this set-up makes excellent sense, both operationally and commercially for all parties.”