With DAZN making a big splash by signing Canelo Alvarez to a long-term deal and getting Matchroom Boxing and Golden Boy Promotions to hop on board, the streaming service is hoping to make a big splash in the United States and Eric Gomez believes in that future.
Gomez, the President of Golden Boy Promotions, spoke to Fightful during a recent media call and touched upon why the company elected to jump on to DAZN despite it coming out in the United States this past September. When Alvarez signed his record-breaking deal with DAZN, Golden Boy Promotions, who promote Alvarez, also entered an exclusive long-term broadcast deal after its current deal with ESPN and HBO ended.
Gomez stated that with the way online streaming has been evolving and television numbers moving the way that they have been in recent years point to a successful future for DAZN and Golden Boy Promotions wanted to be a part of it.
"Obviously, we believe in the product. We have tons and tons of data that we’ve compiled the last three years or so, and the landscape for television, especially for sports in television, is changing. It really is changing. The viewership on pay-per-views have been going down and down and down. When you have two massive fights back to back, Canelo versus [Gennady] Golovkin 1 and 2, and the online streaming services are outdoing the linear pay-per-view, it’s very compelling, it’s eye opening. So I feel that the vision that Skipper has, John Skipper has for DAZN and some of the plans they have that I can’t really discuss at this time, we believe in them, and it’s going to be the future,” Gomez said.
The first fight card in the new deal will be December 15 at Madison Square Garden where Alvarez will be fighting Rocky Fielding for Fielding’s WBA “regular” super middleweight title. A number of Golden Boy Promotions fighters, such as Ryan Garcia and David Lemieux, are also competing on the card.
Fightful will have live coverage of the event, which will feature multiple world title fights. You can listen to the audio of Gomez talking to Fightful in the video above.
