Who owns DAZN? Ownership structure explained (2026)

DAZN is one of the largest sports-streaming companies in the world, and one of the most heavily funded private media businesses of the past decade. It streams live football, boxing, and dozens of other sports to viewers across more than 200 markets. Yet unlike Netflix or Spotify, DAZN answers to no public shareholders and files no quarterly earnings with a stock exchange.

That is because DAZN sits inside the private empire of one man. Sir Len Blavatnik has bankrolled the company through years of steep losses, and his holding company Access Industries remains its controlling owner. Understanding who owns DAZN means understanding how a single billionaire has underwritten a bet on the future of how the world watches sport.

The picture changed in 2025. A roughly $1 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign-wealth machinery, plus stakes handed to News Corp and Telstra through the Foxtel acquisition, added new names to a cap table that had been almost entirely Blavatnik's. This article breaks down who controls DAZN, who funds it, and why its ownership structure matters.

DAZN traces its roots to Perform Group, a sports-media company co-founded in 2007 by Simon Denyer and Oli Slipper. Access Industries took control of Perform, and the group built the technology and rights relationships that would become a streaming platform. DAZN launched as a consumer brand in 2016, initially in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Japan, positioning itself as the "Netflix of sport." The comparison is deliberate, since DAZN copies the subscription playbook behind how Netflix makes money and applies it to live rights.

The company is headquartered in Hammersmith, London. Its core product is a subscription streaming service for live and on-demand sports, spanning football leagues, boxing, and a growing catalog of rights across more than 200 markets. DAZN also sells advertising and, increasingly, offers free-to-view events to widen its audience.

DAZN reported revenue of about $3.2 billion for 2024 and cut its pre-tax loss to roughly $936 million, down from about $1.4 billion a year earlier. Management has said it expects revenue to rise sharply in 2025, helped by the Foxtel acquisition and new rights deals. The subscriber base was reported approaching 20 million globally. As a private company, DAZN discloses these figures selectively rather than through audited public filings, so exact numbers can vary by source and reporting period.

DAZN is privately held and has never conducted an initial public offering. There is no ticker symbol, no market capitalization, and no daily share price. Ownership is concentrated in private hands, dominated by Access Industries, with a small group of strategic minority investors added since 2024. This structure gives DAZN unusual freedom to absorb losses that would alarm public-market shareholders, because the company does not report to them.

The controlling owner is Access Industries, the New York-based holding company founded in 1986 by Sir Leonard "Len" Blavatnik. Blavatnik is a British-American billionaire whose fortune spans chemicals, music, and media. Access Industries also owns Warner Music Group and holds stakes across entertainment and technology.

Blavatnik has been DAZN's financial backbone. Reporting indicates he has injected a cumulative total above $6.5 billion into the business, with some accounts putting the figure near $7 billion by 2025 after further capital was added early in the year. These injections have funded expensive multi-year sports-rights deals and the losses that came with them. No other single shareholder comes close to Blavatnik's commitment, and Access Industries retains clear control of the company.

In February 2025, SURJ Sports Investment agreed to take a minority stake in DAZN. SURJ is a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), the sovereign-wealth fund at the center of the kingdom's push into global sport. The investment was widely reported at around $1 billion.

DAZN did not officially disclose the price or the exact percentage acquired. Reporting varied, with some outlets citing roughly 10 percent and others describing a stake below 5 percent, which underlines how little of the cap table is public. The deal came paired with plans for a new joint venture, DAZN MENA, to broadcast sport across the Middle East and North Africa. The investment gives PIF a foothold in a leading global sports streamer while remaining a minority position behind Blavatnik.

DAZN has not raised money through conventional venture funding rounds. Its capital has come mainly from Access Industries and, more recently, from strategic partners. The table below summarizes the major known injections and stake transactions rather than priced venture rounds.

Access Industries is the anchor investor and controlling shareholder, and Blavatnik's capital has kept DAZN operating through years of losses. Its stake dwarfs every other holder.

SURJ Sports Investment, and behind it the Public Investment Fund, is the most significant new backer. PIF's involvement ties DAZN into Saudi Arabia's broader sports strategy, which already includes LIV Golf, football, and boxing.

News Corp and Telstra became minority holders through the Foxtel deal. When DAZN acquired the Australian pay-TV group Foxtel in a transaction with an enterprise value of about $2.2 billion, News Corp took a stake of roughly 6 percent in DAZN and Telstra took about 3 percent, alongside a News Corp board seat. These are strategic, not financial, investors, and their stakes are small relative to Access Industries.

Sir Len Blavatnik is the ultimate owner and the decisive figure in DAZN's ownership. Through Access Industries he controls the company and has funded it personally. Any major decision about DAZN's direction runs through his holding company.

Shay Segev is DAZN Group's chief executive officer. He joined in 2021 and became sole CEO in 2022, having previously led the gambling group Entain. Segev runs day-to-day strategy, rights acquisition, and the drive toward profitability.

The founding executives, Simon Denyer and Oli Slipper, built Perform Group and the early DAZN business. Denyer created and led DAZN before moving to a role at Access Industries in 2020, and later leadership passed through James Rushton to Segev.

Kevin Mayer, the former Disney and TikTok executive, served as DAZN's chairman from 2021 until his term ended in early 2023, after which he stepped down from the board. He is not a founder of the company and does not currently lead it, despite occasional references that conflate his past chairmanship with a founding role. The board now includes representation from strategic investors, including a News Corp appointee following the Foxtel deal.

DAZN's defining financial issue has been its reliance on Blavatnik's capital. The company has run large losses for years, funded by billions in injections from Access Industries. Even after cutting its 2024 loss to about $936 million, DAZN remains dependent on continued backing until it reaches sustained profitability. That dependence concentrates risk in a single owner's willingness to keep funding the business.

PIF's investment through SURJ places DAZN inside the debate over Saudi Arabia's expanding role in global sport. Critics describe such investments as sportswashing, arguing they use sport to soften the kingdom's international image. Supporters point to commercial logic and market access. The DAZN MENA joint venture ties the company more tightly to Saudi interests, which invites scrutiny that a purely private media company would not attract.

DAZN competes for expensive sports rights against deep-pocketed rivals, from traditional broadcasters to other streamers such as the live-TV service Fubo. The FIFA Club World Cup 2025 deal, reported at around $1 billion for global rights offered free to view, shows both the scale of DAZN's ambition and the cost of pursuing it. Overpaying for rights, or losing key ones, is a persistent risk to the business model.

DAZN's ownership structure explains its strategy. Because Blavatnik funds the company privately, DAZN can absorb losses and make long-dated bets that a public company would struggle to justify to shareholders. The decision to stream the FIFA Club World Cup free to a global audience, chasing scale over near-term revenue, is the kind of move that private control makes possible. Understanding the risk in that approach is easier with a business valuation lens, since DAZN's worth rests on future growth rather than current profit.

The arrival of PIF, News Corp, and Telstra changes the calculus. New strategic investors bring capital, content, and market access, but they also bring their own interests to the table. PIF's stake links DAZN to Saudi sports policy, while News Corp's holding ties it to a major media group with its own agenda. These relationships shape which rights DAZN pursues and which markets it prioritizes.

For viewers, ownership determines what they can watch and how they pay for it. A privately funded DAZN can experiment with free events, bundled subscriptions, and aggressive expansion, but it can also raise prices or shift content as it pushes toward profitability. The tension between growth and margin, common across subscription services from music to video and visible in how Spotify makes money, plays out here without the discipline of public markets.

For the wider industry, DAZN is a test of whether a private, billionaire-funded challenger can build a durable sports-streaming business against entrenched broadcasters. If it reaches sustained profit, it validates the model. If it does not, it becomes a cautionary tale about the cost of buying sports rights at scale.

DAZN is owned and controlled by Access Industries, the private holding company of billionaire Sir Len Blavatnik. He is the dominant shareholder and funder. Minority stakes are held by SURJ Sports Investment (part of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund), News Corp, and Telstra.

No. DAZN is privately held and has never conducted an initial public offering. It has no stock ticker and no public market valuation. Its financial results are disclosed selectively rather than through audited public filings, which is common for private companies like Netflix's earlier private-era peers but distinct from the publicly listed Netflix of today.

The company grew out of Perform Group, co-founded in 2007 by Simon Denyer and Oli Slipper. The DAZN consumer streaming brand launched in 2016 under Access Industries ownership. Blavatnik's Access Industries has controlled the business throughout.

Shay Segev is the chief executive officer of DAZN Group. He joined in 2021 and became sole CEO in 2022, after previously leading the gambling company Entain.

Reporting indicates Len Blavatnik has invested a cumulative total above $6.5 billion through Access Industries, with some accounts citing close to $7 billion by 2025. In addition, SURJ Sports Investment invested a reported $1 billion for a minority stake in February 2025, and News Corp and Telstra received DAZN stakes through the Foxtel acquisition.

DAZN has no public market valuation because it has never floated. The SURJ investment, reported at around $1 billion for a minority stake, implied a valuation in the billions, though DAZN did not disclose the exact figure. For companies like this, worth is estimated rather than quoted, since it depends on future subscriber and revenue growth rather than current earnings.