Covid-19/TV rights: DAZN "officially in survival mode" will only pay for matches played

The OTT platform DAZN has informed rights holders that the next payment installments will not be settled for the suspended or cancelled competitions it broadcasts and that only matches/events played will be paid for, according to information from the American financial media company Bloomberg, on 31/03/2020, while the Covid-19 epidemic has claimed the lives of over 47,500 people and has forced the confinement of more than 3 billion people worldwide, as of 02/04/2020.

The company's board of directors is "officially placing DAZN in survive mode," according to Simon Denyer, CEO of DAZN, in a letter to employees. "There is no hiding that it is the biggest disaster to hit the sports world in 75 years and the biggest challenge our business has ever faced. With revenues dropping and investment not available, we can only survive by making some hard decisions."

According to Bloomberg, DAZN's plan includes a recruitment freeze, the suspension of salary reviews and the layoff/unemployment of an indeterminate number of employees, while the platform is particularly exposed to the suspension of…