DAZN is further expanding its reach into prediction markets, though the firm probably wouldn’t call its new platform ‘betting’ or ‘wagering’ to be exact – and its contemporaries in its new realm of predictions certainly don’t like their products being referred to as this.
The OTT sports streaming platform announced the launch of a predictions product earlier this week, partnering with Polymarket to integrate predictions markets into its platform. This comes just under four years after the launch of the DAZN Bet sportsbook in April 2022.
Shay Segev, CEO of DAZN, commented on the growing popularity of predictions at the ICE gaming trade show just 30 minutes after the announcement was made public. Albeit addressing the new product briefly, he expressed confidence that DAZN will build up its profile in the space.
“It’s on the rise – Kalshi, Polymarket, Crypto.com,” he said. “We want to participate in this industry, Fanatics are doing it, the UFC are doing it, I think DAZN has a core role to play in this industry as well.”
DAZN’s foray into predictions will focus only on the US, at least initially. This won’t come as a surprise to many, as the US has risen in prominence as the biggest market for prediction platforms over the past year, though DAZN has stated that launches in other countries will follow.
Kalshi has emerged as a big player, while Polymarket was able to secure re-entry to the market via an acquisition last year – having been in exile after coming to an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) back in 2020.
On the topic of the CFTC, the regulator has become much more hands off with regards to predictions under the presidency of Donald Trump than it was under Joe Biden. This has enabled prediction platforms to flourish and expand nationwide.
DAZN states that it will apply for a CFTC licence for its predictions platform. The firm intends to offer predictions as part of its wider ecosystem, which includes the FanZone platform, sports streaming, news and highlights, and the DAZN Bet sportsbook – though this is not active in the US.
“DAZN is laser-focused on bringing fans closer to the sports they love,” Segev was quoted as saying in the streaming service’s announcement of its expansion into predictions.
“Through our partnership with Polymarket – the world’s largest prediction market – we will offer another immersive and exciting way for fans to experience sport. Integrating prediction trading will be an excellent addition to our platform.”
DAZN’s betting history
DAZN Bet launched back in 2022, initially in the UK. Over the following years it has launched in Ireland, Spain, Italy and Germany, and reportedly is looking at getting in on Ontario – in doing so securing a foothold in Canada ahead of the Alberta market launch this year.
“The online gaming industry itself is converging.” Shay Segev said at ICE this week, reflecting on the merger of online poker, casino, bingo and betting products and websites over the past 20 or so years.
“As we evolved, everyone realised it’s not very efficient,” he said. “Customer acquisition and retention, platform and compliance costs are so high that in order to create synergies you need one umbrella, a one stop shop for gaming products.”
The markets DAZN Bet is active in are highly competitive, to say the least. The UK is one of the most saturated markets on the planet, and one also undergoing significant regulatory and financial restructuring.
Germany has been in the process of a regulatory adjustment, following the 2021 adoption of a new framework. Spain is also home to some pretty significant marketing restrictions, as is Italy – though the new Italian market in place since November 2025 has been met with a good reception.
Combining its historic product of sports broadcasting and sports entertainment with its still relatively new foray into betting is DAZN’s winning edge, leadership believe. Shay Segev is also no stranger to betting, having held leadership roles at one of the industry’s biggest names.
Between March 2016 and June 2020 he was Chief Operating Officer at GVC Holdings, and became CEO of the firm in July 2020. He held the top job at the LSE firm until June 2021, overseeing its rebrand from GVC Holdings to Entain towards the end of 2020.
This tenure at one of the world’s biggest betting firms, the operator of Ladbrokes Coral and bwin among other brands, seems to have informed a lot of Segev’s opinions around where betting and media conversion could lead.
“We don’t want to create just another betting site,” he told the audience in Barcelona. “We want more social, more community, more complementary to the fan experience. To create an experience that is integrated and fun while interacting on DAZN.”
He added: “When you go to DAZN you go to watch sports, we don’t expect you to bet, but if you do want to bet it’s a complementary product.”
Focusing further on Italy, where DAZN has a unique position as the domestic broadcasting partner of the Serie A, Segev remarked that “DAZN is the biggest sports platform in Italy with exclusive rights to Serie A”.
“If you’re an Italian who likes sport, who likes football, you can only watch it on DAZN, and you should also be able to bet on it on DAZN,” he said.
Predicting the future
According to DAZN’s latest financial filings, its betting propositions are playing an increasingly important role in its growth. The company has been chasing profitability for many years, declaring losses in various reports to Companies House.
In October 2025, DAZN’s corporate accounts for 2024 showed that it was moving closer and closer to profitability, while revenue for that year was up 11% from £2.9bn to £3.2bn and losses were cut from $1.4bn to $877.5m.
Although betting is still a secondary product to its media activity in the grand scheme of things, DAZN Bet still factors strongly into the London-headquartered multinationals ambitions to flip the business of fan engagement and sports entertainment on its head.
At ICE this week, Segev remarked: “We have a lot of engagement on our platform during live events, we want to expand even further with event engagement and keeping people engaged when we don’t have big events.
“We want to make sure the big audiences we have on the big events can be retained, and that needs further content. AI can play a big role in this.”
DAZN’s ambitions are to become an effective one-stop-shop for sports entertainment – encompassing viewership, news and updates, ticketing and merchandise e-commerce, social engagement, betting, and now via its deal with Polymarket, predictions.
Segev did not comment much on the firm’s new predictions ambitions at ICE, but his comments clearly show that predictions are going to factor into its sports-media-entertainment conversion ambitions.
Shayne Coplan, Polymarket Founder and CEO, seemed to sum this up in his statement on the DAZN deal earlier this week, remarking that “every sporting event is a conversation about what happens next”.
“Polymarket turns that conversation into real-time probabilities, shaped by millions of users around the world,” he said. “Through our first-of-its-kind partnership with DAZN, we’re embedding those insights directly into the viewing experience—from boxing to the Champions League—so fans can track momentum, debate outcomes, and engage with sports in a way that’s never existed before.”
As stated above, this will focus on the US initially with other market launches planned – though this could become a tricky game, as some European countries have not been very receptive to predictions. Polymarket itself has been blocked in France, Belgium, Romania, and now Portugal, for example.
The future of predictions in the US is also not entirely certain. The CFTC has been more hands off under Donald Trump, much more so than under Joe Biden, enabling predictions to flourish. Whether this would last under a different presidential administration, particularly a Democratic one, is much harder to predict – no pun intended.