{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"The Business of Sport - Hannah Brown","description":"Hannah Brown is the co-CEO of Women\u2019s Sport for DAZN. With over 20 years of experience in finance, sports media, pay TV, corporate venture and business transformation, Hannah now has the task of developing DAZN\u2019s investment in women\u2019s football rights globally, into a significant business opportunity. Together with Esmeralda Negron, she founded ata football, a streaming platform and community for women\u2019s football fans. ata football was acquired by DAZN in 2023 and the pair now share joint CEO status of Women\u2019s Sport at DAZN. Hannah on DAZN:  \u201cDAZN is a really interesting platform because it has grown, solely in a digital environment. So when we think about how DAZN has got it\u2019s products to market, it has done that through really one delivery system, it\u2019s not had to worry about legacy technology or distribution platforms.  It is wholly a digital business, which allows us to do a number of things. It allows us to turn up in all markets around the world simultaneously. There are big streaming challenges in order to do that, which DAZN has tested and met as an 8 year-old business.  What \u201cdigital solely\u201d platforms allow you to do, is, yes, turn up in lots of markets at the same time, but it also gives you lots of flexibility when you think about the business models. We want to be the global home of sport. We are doing that vertical by vertical. If you ask football fans outside the UK, we are already the home of football for them.\u201d   Hannah on the DAZN FanZone: \u201cWe run Fan Zone on a multitude of our properties, not just women's football and we are getting pretty decent engagement rates, around 20 to 30% of fans on premium sports events. But when we put it on women's football, that average goes up to 40% and when Barcelona played at Manchester City in the UWCL recently, that FanZone engagement went up to 60%. It was really encouraging to see big match-ups, big story-telling moments. A similar thing happened when Arsenal played Juventus and when big team take part, fans have got a lot to say. The fans are very positive about that experience too because they are coming into an environment which is not aggressive, they are allowed to say what they want and negative chat in those groups is basically non-existent. There\u2019s a lot of fun in the FanZone with quizzes and polls, but we integrated that into the broadcast environment in a really serious way, with commentators talking about what the fans are saying, getting their feedback, voting for Player of the Match. So its really nice to be able to say you can get involved and have fun, but we are also going to take your views and perspectives seriously from a broadcast perspective. We have seen a lot of success with FanZone and I think we have only just got started.\u201d   Hannah on the future of Women\u2019s Sport: I think from a sponsorship perspective, the uniqueness of women\u2019s sport is definitely valuable. How do you get to an audience with a unique message and positioning. I was a biologist back in the day at University and my analogy is that when men's football put it\u2019s head out of the ecological pond from a commercial perspective in the 90\u2019s, the content landscape was not cluttered and it was coming out as a big and strong fish. It had a big fandom and lots of people cared deeply about it and came out with a strategy to grow and prosper in the environment it found. Women\u2019s football put it\u2019s head out of the ecological pond into a concrete landscape of content and competition, and that\u2019s not just from men\u2019s football, its from everything that people want to do with their weekends. The ease with which content is made available is so different now. So how does women\u2019s football lean into what makes it unique and allows it to go and compete at the product level? Because I think the challenge you have is that if you are a music artist, you are either good or you\u2019re not. People don\u2019t buy a ticket for Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift, thinking they will be good in three years time\u2026.they buy because they are good now. So, Women\u2019s Football can\u2019t ask for forgiveness on fandom for a long time, it\u2019s got to create a unique position in the market which then becomes valuable to a sponsor, with kit apparel or broadcast rights. For football, scale is critical. Running teams and rosters isn\u2019t a cheap business and therefore everyone pushing that bar as high is possible is critical, because mediocrity is not going to win.\u201d ","author_name":"The Business of Sport","author_url":"https:\/\/internationalsportsconvention.com\/","html":"