The DAZN Bet sportsbook is making a significant contribution to its parent firm’s overall financial performance according to claims made in its corporate accounts for 2024.

Submitted to Companies House, DAZN Group‘s accounts show the OTT sports media platform edging closer towards profitability, though this latter goal still remains several hundred million pounds off.

The London-based multinational reported revenue of just under £3.2bn, up 11% from £2.9bn the year prior, while it expects to become profitable by the end of the year.

Though it has a long-way to go, DAZN has significantly cut its losses from $1.4bn to $8.77m and while EBITDA also remained negative, this loss was also flipped from $1.3bn in 2023 to $877.3m in 2024.

So what role did betting play in all this? According to the company, a substantial one, although still minor in comparison to its media rights deals – hardly given this is its primary product.

DAZN still has lofty ambitions for its betting proposition, the accounts detail. The brand was first launched in the UK back in April 2022 and the following years have seen launches in three other European markets.

The firm’s accounts asserted: “DAZN Bet is now established in four markets – UK, Spain, Italy and Germany – and is expected to launch in other markets over time. The service is reshaping the way sports fans engage with the game.”

DAZN’s accounts claim that this reshaping of fan engagement sits alongside OTT sports subscriptions, pricing models, subscriber acquisition, and portfolio of boxing events as key factors driving an 11% increase in direct-to-customer revenue to $3.1bn (2023: $315.8m).

Risky business of betting-media integrations

Although its betting project seems to be helping with its long march towards profitability – a prospect which has been eluding the firm since its foundation in 2015 as a rebrand from the Perform Group – DAZN has acknowledged the risks associated with this.

The strategic report section of its 2024 accounts lists ‘betting regulations’ as one of the key business risks it encounters, noting that it holds ‘gambling operating licences in a number of regulated territories and maintaining robust levels of compliance is a strategic priority”.

The four countries where DAZN Bet is active are certainly highly regulated ones, with some notoriously tough when compared to other European nations. In Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, for example, betting marketing and advertising is strictly regulated, with sponsorship outright banned in the latter two.

In the UK, meanwhile, the relationship between betting and sports is facing mounting pressure. A self-imposed ban on betting front-of-shirt deals is coming into effect in the Premier League next season, but many campaigners want to see measures go further than this.

The newly created Independent Football Regulator (IFR), which has just seen its first Chair appointed, has not been assigned any regulatory tasks around football’s engagement with gambling.

However, the legislative debate which led to the IFR’s foundation did see some attempts to write gambling into the regulator’s responsibilities, showing the extent to which betting’s relationship with sports organisations, whether clubs or media outlets, continues to face scrutiny in the UK.