In Leeds, in the heart of Dazn, where the idea of ​​a super app is thriving

LEEDS – Sandeep Tiku talk fast. He apologizes with a joke: “I go fast, like Dazn”. He jokes, but you can tell from his smile that he is proud. He has been the Cto of the company for about ten months. It is the man who takes care of his technological innovation. And the future, for Dazn, is full of exciting challenges.

It is no longer just a matter of stream, of rights, of sporting events. Dazn is not just a media company. Dazn is to all intents and purposes, and will be even more so in the coming years, a tech company. In summary: a super digital platform. Like Elon Musk, who wants to transform Twitter into a super app with which to do everything – even economic transactions – the British multinational also wants to offer numerous services that go beyond the ‘simple’ distribution of sporting events: the sale of tickets and team merchandising, sports bets, news, podcasts, club and player statistics and some simple but effective interactive forms, such as the possibility of guessing where a player will take a penalty. And then the social use.

Already today the youngest users of Dazn follow the matches using a “second screen” to comment them with friends, perhaps on Whatsapp, Instagram or TikTok. So why not bring these conversations aboard the platform. Why, in short, not involve the Gen Z replicating the social functions that he loves so much.

In Spain, for example, it already happens. The function is called Watch Party and allows friends and family to use second screen chat to comment live on the match without changing platform. In Italy the “Watch Party” has only been tested on some Serie B matches, with a small number of users, and Dazn seems willing to open these virtual rooms also to Serie A, starting from next season. But there may be surprises on this feature even in the short term, an early official debut is not excluded.

There are so many things at stake that one wonders: “But what about sport? Isn’t there a risk of getting lost in all this offer?”. Tiku responds promptly. “We have no intention of showing users things they don’t want to see during live events – says the manager – For this we analyze the data, every single bit. To understand what our customers want. And to intelligently organize what to offer before and after an event, when to do it and where not to do it. We are designing all of this always keeping in mind the needs of the consumer”.

A pop-up with interactive content, during a live broadcast, can always be deleted. But it is still a form of disturbance. The Cto of Dazn knows this well. And he also knows that subscribers must be protected from such interference.

“Premium customers will not be affected by all this – says Tiku – we will start gradually”. The right path, says the manager, is to test the new functions on the future “freemium” offeri.e. on premium contents of the platform, carefully selected, which will soon be visible to all, even to those who do not pay a subscription. The experiment could start as early as next August, says Tiku, “but it will take at least a couple of years to find the right balance between what consumers want and what we can offer”.

Sandeep Tiku is like a tailor. She dreams of sewing the perfect dress for Dazn’s customers. “We don’t want to fill them with things to do or see – she says – we want to create an experience”. And to do so, the British multinational will use the data.

In the past seven years, DAZN has analyzed the habits of fans, a mass of 550 terabytes of anonymous data to offer more and more a sophisticated personalized experience based on what you love to watch. This data is invaluable because it can be analyzed using artificial intelligence. The AI, in response, it can help develop products that are better suited to a certain type of consumer. And it can also suggest when to propose them.

Tiku gives a very clear example: “There are consumers who prefer certain contents in the morning but not in the evening. Others who want gossip in the morning, or news, and want nothing more than streaming in the afternoon. Each of them has a habit. For this reason, AI represents a strategic technology for us when we design personalized experiences for our customers”.

Sandeep Tiku’s words flow fast and passionate in one of the rooms of the Dazn headquarterslocated in a large building in Leeds.

Tiku already looks to the future, but it is in these offices that the company has laid the foundations of a solid present. The numbers say it. Since it was founded in 2016, Dazn has gradually expanded its reach to cover more than 200 markets. In this period of time, the multinational has entered into important agreements for the distribution of its contents – in Italy with Sky, for example – and has also carried out notable acquisitions such as that of Elevenwhich took place in 2022.

There are 60 million registered users on the platform, of which 20 million premium who have access to a varied offer: football from the main European (and non-European) leagues, NBA basketball, NFL football, boxing, tennis and many other sports and tournaments that lead to approximately 27,000 events are broadcast each year. “In mid-March – the company’s CFO told us Darren Waterman – we reached 207 events in a single day, for a total of 1.2 billion live minutes”.

These are impressive figures that the end user usually doesn’t think about. For Sandeep Tiku, however, Dazn’s behind the scenes is “thrilling”, i.e. addictive. It is “magic”, says the manager, which deserves to be explained and told, because it requires work and an important level of attention, which Tiku – in a passionate impulse – has approached the “launch of a rocket”.

Before ending up in the eyes of the fans, the Dazn images of a sporting event follow a predefined path. Let’s take an example that concerns a Serie A match. The signal with the commentary starts from the stadium and reaches the Dazn studios located in Cologno Monzese, where the images and commentary are combined with generic graphics. Then from Lombardy it leaves again towards Leeds, in fact, where the signal is checked, encrypted and prepared to be received by the various devices.

At this point the images go back to Italy to be distributed to end users through the largest Dazn content distribution network outside England. A network that now matters 60 servers spread over 44 nodes along the boot. This is an infrastructure that Dazn started building in Italy in 2020/21 and which brings the source of live content significantly closer to our country’s subscribers.

The journey of the Dazn signal, which involves a lot of work and a lot of resources, actually lasts very little: from the stadium to the viewers homes, it takes roughly less than 20 seconds. If everything goes right. Because Dazn learned on his skin that in Italy the pitfalls may be just around the corner. And for this reason, last month, he inaugurated a Noc-Network Operation Center in his offices in Cologno Monzese – which constantly monitors the status of the stream and the problems that users may encounter.

The new Noc, where around 10 engineers work day and night, is confronted daily with the headquarters in Leeds, in particular with the room occupied by the Design support center: here dozens of screens report data and statistics regarding the user experience of users. And always in this room is busy the team that deals with cybersecurity.

But the real challenge is the distribution of the signal, as can be seen from the dozens of screens and desks that characterize the two main rooms of the headquarters: the Master Control Room, where the goodness of the signal is verified, and the adjacent one dedicated to its transmission. In the first, six operators control up to 90 events simultaneously. In the second, larger one, there are sixteen workstations for as many operators. Each of them generally deals with championships of medium or minor importance, and can manage up to four events simultaneously.

But for cartel matches, the flagships of Dazn programming, such as a Serie A or Liga match or an important match in the Champions League or Europa League, there are dedicated rooms where a single operator focuses on every little detail. It’s not difficult to recognize them, because each one has a special plate on the door: “San Siro”, “Allianz Arena” or “Santiago Bernabeu” let us understand what kind of signal is being processed inside.

It is easy to understand that matches like the derby della Madonnina, or El Clàsico, require special attention. For example, the most complicated scenarios must be taken into account. It is practically impossible, they explained to us, for the Leeds headquarters to remain in the dark – there are generators that can guarantee up to 20 hours of continuity – but even if this Dazn has set up a parachute: The signal would pass into the hands of the company’s own center in Bangor, Northern Ireland, where emergency resources have been allocated. When the signal is transmitted, at the two sites, a total of 100 people work.

“One of the questions we get asked most often is why we concentrate everything in one distribution center and don’t instead set up one in every country where we broadcast – he tells us Nick Taylor, VP Broadcast Operations at Dazn -. It’s because of the economy of scale: this organization allows us to offer our users a greater number of conveniently controlled events, using the same resources that work, in shifts, in this building day and night, seven days a week”.

Dazn arrived in Italy in 2018. In the three-year period 2018-2021 it broadcast a selection of Serie A matches, the rights of which belonged – at the time – to Sky Italia. Then the British multinational won the whole package. A real revolution for football fans, who have passed from dish to streaming in a short time. The transition has not been easy in a country where there are numerous areas of the territory – some even in large cities – still not covered by the fiber and even by the 4G signal. Dazn paid the price. And she found herself reimbursing her users on the occasion of two glaring disservices: the first occurred on the weekend of 14/15 August 2022, the second instead occurred during the Inter-Napoli match last January.

Yet walking the corridors of the Leeds headquarters, and talking to the people who work there, it is clear that Dazn is making an enormous effort to eliminate the critical issues that threaten streaming. By investing money, of course, but also by focusing on the right people. People like Sandeep Tiku, who as a child took apart video games to understand how they worked and how to improve them: an impetus towards perfection that has remained in his DNA.

“I feel truly happy only when I’m about to fall asleep and review what was important during the day – says Tiku – and then I fall asleep. But only if I’ve done something good for the company. And for consumers.”