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Home » Joshua vs Ruiz Jr. 2 takes DAZN nod after UK PPV record miss

Joshua vs Ruiz Jr. 2 takes DAZN nod after UK PPV record miss

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Boxing has a long way to go on the DAZN platform in the United States despite Anthony Joshua vs Andy Ruiz Jr. 2 winning the top streaming honor for 2019.

Without releasing official numbers, Joshua vs Ruiz 2 was revealed to have been the most-watched sporting event of last year.

The Saudi Arabia clash, which saw Joshua regain his world titles in a drab affair, beat Liverpool’s summer Champions League victory into second place.

Joshua vs Ruiz 2 was recently announced as a Pay-Per-View record-breaker in the United Kingdom, although WBN revealed this to be a premature report.

Due to logic of adding two weeks’ views together, Joshua vs Ruiz gained 1.54m views on Sky Sports Box Office. If this principle is also used for Joshua’s fights with Wladimir Klitschko and Joseph Parker, both beat the Ruiz fight into third place.

As WBN explained, over two weeks, Joshua vs Klitschko gained 1.581m, whilst the Parker fight was miles ahead on 1.832m.

Thanks to a deal with Golden Boy and Canelo Alvarez, the bonafide side of the sport did manage to take three of the top ten spots.

A YouTube Boxing event, tipped to break records in the build-up, ended up flopping into fifth place. The fight, featuring two online presenters, also failed to set UK Pay-Per-View alight with under 300,000 buys despite being half-price.

In total, 107 events surpassed one million streams during the last twelve months, according to DAZN.

Top 10 Most-Streamed Events on DAZN in 2019

1. Ruiz vs. Joshua II (Dec. 7)
2. UEFA Champions League: Tottenham vs. Liverpool (June 1)
3. UEFA Champions League: Liverpool vs. Barcelona (May 7)
4. Canelo vs. Kovalev (Nov. 2)
5. YouTube Boxing (Nov. 9)
6. UEFA Champions League: Tottenham vs. Bayern Munich (Oct. 1)
7. Serie A: Milan v Internazionale (Sept. 21)
8. UEFA Champions League: Ajax vs. Tottenham (May 8)
9. UEFA Champions League: Barcelona vs. Liverpool (May 1)
10. Canelo vs. Jacobs (May 4)

As more sports shift from linear to OTT distribution, DAZN saw record consumption in 2019 with more than a half billion hours streamed (507 million). That’s an increase of 98 percent from the 256 million hours streamed in 2018.

Other highlights include:

Consumption by Device

1. Mobile: 26 percent
2. Set-top Box/Streaming Stick: 23 percent
3. Smart TV: 21 percent
4. Desktop: 17 percent
5. Game Console: 13 percent

Consumption by Sport

1. Soccer: 314.6 million hours
2. Baseball: 38.1 million hours
3. Motorsport: 37.9 million hours
4. American Football: 37.2 million hours
5. Boxing: 22.6 million hours

As WBN reported last year DAZN the number one sports app on the market. Also the largest, fastest growing global sports streaming service.

Since launching in 2016, DAZN is now live in nine countries across four continents, including Austria, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United States.

***Top 10 rankings are based on the number of live and on-demand streams per event of more than one minute.