The Athletic

Hello, I'm Dan Bardell.

The Business of Sport podcast on The Athletic is taking a break during the Euros, but here is a special bonus episode to see you through.

The focus is on boxing as promoter Eddie Hearn's Matro in boxing have agreed five-year deal with streaming service DeZone to replace Sky Sports as their exclusive broadcast partner, both in the UK and in Ireland.

So coming up, you'll hear the athletics Matt Slater in conversation with Eddie Hearn and also DeZone's co-CEO James Rushton discussing the deal and some of the wider issues facing the business side of boxing.

Eddie, I noticed from the press release that it all looks very exciting.

There's no numbers in there.

Well, there's a couple, which we all come to.

That's more of a James question.

But there's no big number in there.

Now, the Athletic, of course, sort of broke this story a couple months ago, and we went with

the number 100 million. Are we miles off? Are we there or thereabouts? I was quite offended

by that number. I'm joking. I think the best way to describe it is obviously that you know for 25 years plus we've been aligned with Sky Sports in the UK. We've had a great relationship, a great platform, great people. With the position we've built up in the UK market, something special had to come along to move us and move our position.

Yes, financially, of course, and that's an opportunity for our business and our fighters,

but also with a bigger vision for that.

So I'm not going to give you the numbers, but we're very happy.

All right, read into that what you will, or listening to that what you will, folks.

He was offended, but not that's offended. He didn't correct me, did he? I was very offended, no, no, no. Oh, fair enough. Well, look, I also notice, and not just in the press release, I think I've heard you say this as well, that you think does own the future of boxing. Why? Well, that was an old press release, because they're no longer the future of. I mean, you know, I don't want to sound cheesy, but they are boxing. I mean, when we launched in the US, we went into a new market. No one really knew who Matron were. Certainly no one knew who DeZone were at the time of launching in the US on day one and they've done a tremendous job.

I mean, this is the first time. It's so unique for a rights holder to literally have one hat

on wherever I am in the world to say the only place you can watch our live events is on DeZone.

And for the sport of boxing, that is so exciting because people talk about, you know,

having a dominant position in global boxing. When you have a platform that stages all your

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