Australia’s Optus Sport to use DAZN Connect for backup feeds

Australian telecommunications company Optus has agreed a deal that will see it use DAZN’s new Connect content distribution service to provide backup feeds from the Champions League, Premier League and the Women’s World Cup.

The partnership will see DAZN Connect deliver video IP signals to Optus Sport which is part of Optus, itself owned by Singtel, the Asian communications group.

Various sporting events feature in the deal, including the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Nations League and the Premier League. In addition, DAZN Connect will provide backup distribution services for all 52 games of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

In a statement, DAZN said that Optus chose DAZN Connect because it wanted to “diversify its distribution arrangements and utilise DAZN Connect’s innovative IP-based delivery approach, provide resiliency to Optus Sport across its service, and add redundancy and multiple back-up paths throughout the Optus Sport platforms.”

Gareth Rees, the senior vice president of business development at DAZN Connect, said: “We are very much looking forward to working with Optus and helping them to continue to deliver their premium football rights portfolio. 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.”

DAZN Connect, a cloud-native content distribution service for rights holders, broadcasters and media partners, was launched in April 2019.