Shay Segev’s DAZN betting division begins to take shape

Shay Segev is slowly but surely assembling a real-money gambling dream team at global sports streaming service DAZN as the company prepares to penetrate the online sports betting and gaming industry. The Israeli made a sudden exit as Entain CEO back in January 2021 after being offered a lucrative contract to become co-CEO of DAZN alongside James Rushton, who served as CEO since June 2020. DAZN is pitched as the sports version of Netflix. The firm was founded in 2015 and is owned by the UK’s richest man, Ukrainian-born Sir Leonard Blavatnik, who according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2021 has amassed a personal fortune of £23bn. The business has gone on the aggressive this year in an ambitious attempt to gain market share from its commercial, terrestrial and cable TV rivals. The platform plans to increase its subscription price from £1.99 to £7.99 a month from the end of September after coaxing Eddie Hearn’s boxing production company Matchroom away from Sky Sports in a five-year contract worth £100m.

It is also rumoured to be interested in acquiring BT Sport as it would allow the service to take over Premier League broadcast rights and would provide it with a new production centre. Segev was hired to make similar inroads in the betting and gaming industry. DAZN sees betting integration with live sports streaming as a major driver of future revenue. In fact, when Segev was head of Entain, its US joint venture brand, BetMGM, partnered with DAZN to produce betting content and odds around boxing streams, including for the December 2019 heavyweight bout between Andy Ruiz Jr and Anthony Joshua. Segev has since been tasked with bringing betting content in-house at DAZN and has made his first executive appointment to the division in former colleague Ian Turnbull. Turnbull joined in September as EVP of betting and gaming. He previously worked alongside Segev during a decade-long spell as head of B2B at GVC before heading to Microgaming. Just nine months ago, Turnbull joined the gambling business development department at Amazon Web Services, but his head appears to have been turned by the offer on the table from DAZN and the chance to work with Segev again. Turnbull is now seeking a new London-based VP of product for betting and gaming to join him at DAZN, as advertised on LinkedIn. The job specification reads: “DAZN has been changing how the world consumes sports for the past five years and we are now embarking on an exciting new stage of our journey. “As our VP of product, you’ll head up our new global betting and gaming function. Together with the recently hired EVP of betting revenue and gaming and a team of strategists and developers, you’ll have the opportunity to deliver a fantastic product experience. “Your goal will be to capitalise on the unique opportunity that DAZN has right now: to establish a truly world class betting proposition alongside premier sports rights in some of the most exciting markets in the world.” DAZN boasts around 15 million paid subscribers worldwide according to the BBC. It is currently a loss-making company, having spent millions on broadcast rights, of which some payments had to be suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.