SATURDAY,FEBRUARY22,2020 | THE GLOBE AND MAIL O SPORTS | S5
I
n the world of sports, it’s al-
ways a riveting moment when
a cocky rookie who’s never
known defeat suddenly looks
vulnerable.
The same holds true for sports
media. Over the past couple of
years, one of the most interesting
stories in that world has been the
rise of DAZN, a global streaming
service dubbed “the Netflix of
sports.” Bankrolled by the busi-
nessman Len Blavatnik, who is
estimated to be worth US$19-bil-
lion, DAZN (pronounced da-
zone) aims to disrupt the way we
watch sports as much as the in-
troduction of cable TV blew up
the cozy broadcast landscape in
the 1980s.
But DAZN just blinked.
Canadian sports fans have
viewed the rise of the service,
which launched here in the sum-
mer of 2017 with a massive pack-
age of NFL games and select Eu-
ropean soccer matches, with a
mix of excitement and dread.
Excitement, because after
DAZN picked up a bunch of other
marquee rights, including the En-
glish Premier League, some view-
ers chose to cut their cable cord.
But dread, too: For casual fans of,
say, women’s tennis, DAZN’s ap-
pearance on the scene meant
they couldn’t tune in to TSN or
Sportsnet whenever a women’s
tennis tournament was on. Not
only would they have to pay more
- DAZN retails for $20 a month or
$150 a year – they would also have
to navigate the world of apps,
which is frankly too much of a
hurdle for some techno-chal-
lenged TV viewers.
That erupted into something
of a national crisis last March dur-
ing the BNP Paribas Open at Indi-
an Wells, Calif., when Canadian
tennis fans had to figure out two
things simultaneously: 1) how to
pronounce “Andreescu”; and 2)
which sports channel was show-
ing the 18-year-old unseeded
newcomer destroying anyone in
her path.
What they discovered to their
chagrin, through a lot of frantic
Googling and tweeting, was that
Bianca Andreescu was nowhere
to be found on their cable dial.
DAZN had the rights to the WTA
tournaments, which comprises
all of the important matches in
the women’s calendar outside of
the four Grand Slam events and
the Rogers Cup.
Up that point, it’s fair to say
that most Canadians had barely
heard of DAZN, or how to watch
(or pronounce) it. And even
though, when Andreescu made
the Indian Wells final, DAZN said
it would stream the match free on
its Twitter and Facebook ac-
counts, as well as its app, many
fans missed out.
And so they blasted TSN,
which owns the rights to the
men’s tennis tour, for its per-
ceived sexism in apparently ig-
noring the women. (For what it’s
worth, the last time the WTA
tournaments had been on TV, it
was Rogers Sportsnet that had
the rights. But that was some
years ago and nobody much com-
plained until Bianca came along.)
On Friday afternoon, TSN said
it had secured the rights to nine of
this year’s biggest WTA tourna-
ments, including the Miami
Open, the China Open and the
Qatar Total Open, which begins
airing Sunday morning at 6 a.m.
ET. TSN will also air the trium-
phant return of Andreescu to In-
dian Wells next month, if she has
recovered from her nagging knee
injury by then.
DAZN will continue to stream
those tournaments on its ownplatforms, though no longer on
an exclusive basis.
That’s a sharp comedown for a
company whose business model
is based on securing exclusive
rights to sports events and mak-
ing viewers pay for them. Just last
month, John Skipper, the former
ESPN president who joined DAZN
Group as executive chairman in
2018, told an industry gathering
that “we want exclusive content.
... When we bought the Serie A
rights in Italy, or the Japanese
baseball rights, we bought them
exclusively.” He added: “We want
to move people over. We want a
transformation. We don’t want to
be a complementary service.”
But even goliaths backed by
billionaires sometimes have to
compromise. Because last year, as
Bianca shot up the rankings, the
tennis powers-that-be in this
country and at the WTA began to
chafe at the situation. For the first
time in recent memory – or, per-
haps, ever – one of the biggest
tennis stars in the world was from
Canada. And most Canadians
were missing out. DAZN got the
message: Set Bianca free.
“At the end of the day, the aver-
age tennis fan in this country still
looks towards conventional TV to
see tennis,” Michael Downey, the
president and CEO of Tennis Can-
ada, said in an interview on Fri-
day afternoon. “This is going to be
great news for Canadian tennis
fans who want to watch Bianca,
because she’ll be playing in all
those major tournaments that
TSN has.”
He declined to comment on
whether the WTA or Tennis Cana-
da pushed DAZN to make nice
and share its rights with TSN.
For DAZN, which is still trying
to build awareness of its brand in
Canada, it’s probably a smart
strategy, even if it makes the com-
pany look weak. NFL football and
EPL are its big subscriptions driv-
ers; tennis is a nice add-on, but
few people are going to sign on to
the service just to watch the sec-
ond-tier WTA tournaments.
DAZN will continue to try to build
its brand while flying in the pro-
motional slipstream of TSN, as
that network – which has a much
higher profile, as well as a bigger
marketing budget – raises aware-
ness of the tournaments through
its news coverage, advertising
and the matches themselves.
A few months ago, I spoke with
Norm Lem, the senior vice-presi-
dent of revenue for DAZN Cana-
da, who outlined the unique chal-
lenge of disrupting the sports
landscape in Canada, which is
dominated by two enormous
telecom companies. “If you’re
looking at a very duopolistic –
‘control’ may be a strong word,
but – controlled sports-media
market in Canada, it’s kind of
hard to get your brand out there
to the masses,” he said in an in-
terview at the time. Given that, he
suggested, DAZN would have to
get creative to spread its message.
On Friday, I asked DAZN about
its decision to sublicense its WTA
rights. It declined to comment.InteQAttleofsportsediAgiAntsb A?NQlins
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iancaoutofitscagebas20"willair
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SIMON
HOUPT
OPINIONTORONTO
Canada’sBiancaAndreescuservesduringthe2019WTAFinalslastyear.TSNhasadealtobroadcastnineWTA
eventssofanswillgettoseemoreofAndreescu,aslongassheishealthy.LINTAOZHANG/GETTYIMAGESBryson DeChambeau kept mak-
ing so many birdies in the Mex-
ico Championship that when he
rolled in his ninth one from 45
feet, all he could do was throw
his hands in the air in pure won-
der.
He wasn’t alone Friday in
making birdies, although Rory
McIlroy would like to have
joined the party.
DeChambeau made seven
birdies in an eight-hole stretch at
Chapultepec Golf Club for an
eight-under 63, giving him a one-
shot lead over Erik van Rooyen
of South Africa and Patrick Reed
at the halfway point of this
World Golf Championship. De-
Chambeau was at 11-under 131.
Van Rooyen, who played col-
lege golf at Minnesota, celebrat-
ed his 30th birthday by making
nine birdies to tie the course re-
cord with a 62. Reed made five
birdies on the back nine for a 63
Justin Thomas ran off four
straight birdies to end the back
nine and then holed a 35-foot ea-
gle putt to build a three-shot
lead through 10 holes. That was
gone in a matter of four holes as
player after player kept rolling in
putts on a day with much less
wind and far better scoring. The
average score on the day was
70.28, more than two shots bet-
ter than Thursday.
Canadian Corey Conners shot
a second-round 70 to sit at four
under, alone in 10th place.
Hideki Matusyama was nine
under for his round through 15
holes and had a 20-footer birdie
attempt from the fringe on the
par-three seventh.
He missed that three feet to
the left, then missed the next
one. He bogeyed the next hole,
too, and had to settle for a 64.
That left him at nine-under 133,
along with Thomas, who had to
settle for a 66.
McIlroy wasn’t so fortunate.
Staked to a two-shot lead at the
start of the day, he opened with
eight straight pars, didn’t make a
birdie until his 12th hole and fell
six shots behind at one point.
Two birdies at the end gave him
a 69, and the world’s No. 1 player
was only three shots behind.
“I made eight pars in a row,
and then it’s like, ‘Okay, you’re
either going to make a birdie or a
bogey. What’s going to come
first?’ And I ended up making
bogey,” McIlroy said. “There’s a
long way to go.”
DeChambeau can use all the
science he wants with calcula-
tions for altitude and air density.
The difference for him on this
day wasn’t that difficult to figure
out.
“I just made a lot of putts to-
day,” he said.
Defending champion Dustin
Johnson continued to struggle. A
two-time winner in Mexico,
Johnson has made only three
birdies in two days. He shot 71 on
Friday and was 16 shots behind.THE ASSOCIATED PRESSDeChambeauridesaflockof
birdiestoaleadinMexico
DOUGFERGUSONMEXICOCITY
MARSEILLE, FRANCEFélix
Auger-Aliassime is the last
Canadian standing at the Open
13 Provence tennis tournament
after preventing the country
from going winless in three
quarter-final matches on Friday.
The No. 7 seed from Montreal
beat qualifier Egor Gerasimov of
Belarus 7-5, 6-2 in the last
quarter-final of the day. Earlier,
No. 4 seed Denis Shapovalov of
Richmond Hill, Ont., and un-
seeded Vasek Pospisil of Van-
couver were eliminated at the
ATP 250 indoor hard court
tournament.
Kazakhstan’s Alexander
Bublik defeated Shapovalov 7-5,
4-6, 6-3, before No. 2 seed
Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece
defeated Pospisil 7-5, 6-3.
It marked the first time since
1990 three Canadians reached
the quarter-finals at the sameATP event.
The 19-year-old Auger-Alias-
sime is on a roll on the Europe-
an indoor hard courts, reaching
the semi-finals this week after a
runner-up finish last week in
Rotterdam, Netherlands.
After saving a combined five
match points in his first two
matches in Marseille, the 18th-
ranked Auger-Aliassime won in
straight sets for the first time at
the tournament against the
72nd-ranked Gerasimov.
Auger-Aliassime will face
world No. 58 Gilles Simon in
the semi-finals after the French-
man upset top seed Daniil
Medvedev of Russia 6-4, 6-0.
The Canadian won his only
previous meeting against Si-
mon, prevailing 7-5, 6-4 on
grass outdoors in Stuttgart,
Germany, last year.
THE CANADIAN PRESSAUGER-ALIASSIMEHEADINGTOMARSEILLESEMI-FINALS