DAZN enters the streaming arena – A three-way tussle for Australian football?

Worldwide sports streaming service DAZN recently announced it will expand its international footprint in 2020, distributing its service to more than 200 new countries and territories including Australia.

The first event on DAZN that will be shown to a global audience will be Canelo Alvarez’s soon-to-be-announced fight on May 2.

DAZN EVP Joseph Markowski stated: “Establishing DAZN as the global home of fight sports is just the first step and we couldn’t think of a better attraction for our inaugural event than Canelo’s traditional Cinco de Mayo Weekend fight.”

While the company’s initial focus is on boxing in their global agenda, in the Australian market the Sydney Morning Herald claims DAZN has shown signs of interest in acquiring the A-League rights.

DAZN has a history of pursuing domestic football competition rights in countries where they have implemented their streaming service.

In Japan, DAZN signed a deal with the J.League worth almost $3 billion over a ten-year-period in 2016. The deal, which began in 2017, gave DAZN broadcast rights to show all games in the top three divisions of Japanese football.

The streaming service launched in Italy in August 2018, with exclusive rights acquired to show three Serie A matches per week.

So, if the price is right, why wouldn’t Australian football be a good choice for DAZN’s first major investment in the Australian market?

The upcoming rugby union rights which are set to be settled soon, may also be on the company’s radar.

There is an argument however, that those who watch rugby union may not be an appealing demographic for a streaming service, when compared to those who watch Australian football.

In a column for Fox Sports last week, Simon Hill revealed football is the most digitally engaged sport in the country.

Data put together by research company ‘Futures’ highlighted that almost three out of four people who follow the A-League’s Facebook page are under 35.

While other codes in Australia may have bigger numbers overall, the younger demographic of Australian football fans means more content is consumed online.

This is an attractive proposition for a streaming service such as DAZN, who will be interested in engaging with an already tech savvy audience.

It doesn’t seem like they will be the only ones interested in Australian football rights, with Optus Sport continuing to build their portfolio this past week.

On Tuesday, Optus Sport announced they have secured the rights to broadcast the Copa America this year to Australian viewers.

The tournament rights will include at least five Socceroos games, as Australia enters the South American competition for the first time ever.

Alongside this news, an interesting 14-part series is set to be released in the build-up to UEFA Euro 2020, another tournament they will be broadcasting on their platform.

The series looks to highlight the strong European influence on Australia’s footballing landscape, focusing on historic clubs such as South Melbourne FC, Sydney United and Melbourne Knights.

A two-minute promo for the series shown on Optus Sport’s social channels, has been well received by the online football community.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the telco was involved with further rights negotiations in the future, once the current A-League deal has expired and the National Second Division is up and running.

Football Victoria recently revealed it is in discussions with Optus Sport to broadcast weekly shows on its service.

The telco seems to be on its way to becoming the new home of football in Australia, with Foxtel looking like it is focusing on Cricket, AFL and NRL.

A-League TV ratings are continuing to drop on Foxtel, but the great unknown is its streaming subsidiary Kayo Sports who are not revealing their numbers.

It would make sense that at least part of the A-League’s TV ratings decline is due to those younger football fans migrating to the sport’s streaming service.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the Round 17 match between Sydney FC and Brisbane Roar had a reach of 46,000 for the Fox Sports broadcast and 109,000 when it came to streaming.

While the numbers are not necessarily impressive for the Fox broadcast, the streaming figures are more than double and would include Kayo Sports and the My Football Live service.

The streaming numbers are encouraging for the A-League clubs and also Foxtel, who may see the A-League as an important part of its digital offering on Kayo.

Time will tell whether that is the case, with Foxtel currently holding those rights until 2023.

But what’s evident is that there is appetite for Australian football in the online space, despite the current doom and gloom around linear TV ratings.

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The Future of AI Motion Analysis: From Biomechanics Research, to the ISS, to Juventus Forward

In the fast-evolving field of sports technology, KineMo’s trajectory in early 2026 reflects a piece of a wider movement- one powered by AI, single-camera biomechanics, and a drive to democratise motion tracking across sport, rehab, and even astronaut training.

For Australian club administrators, physios, coaches, and technology partners, KineMo’s recent engagement with Juventus Football Club and the European Space Agency offers both a reflection and a challenge on where athlete monitoring and performance development are heading.

In Turin: Juventus’ Bet on Startup-Led Innovation

The whirlwind started in Turin. KineMo was announced as part of the inaugural cohort of the Juventus Forward innovation program, a next-generation initiative positioning the iconic Italian club as a hub for open innovation in elite sports. The launch event put KineMo’s founders beside Juventus legends and leading sports strategists, confirming the club’s intent to overhaul performance workflows by welcoming global tech startups directly onto the stadium floor.

As part of the initiative, Juventus Forward embeds startups across athlete development, content creation, and guest management, with the club’s staff collaborating in a “live fire” model that lets technology address complex problems in athlete health, rehabilitation, and skills progression. KineMo’s mandate within this environment is clear: deliver scalable, on-demand 3D functional movement screening from ordinary mobile video, no matter the athlete’s level or setting.

For Australian football, especially at NPL or A-League level, this open-access model holds specific appeal. The legacy of expensive, marker-based lab systems has left grassroots teams and independent physios excluded from best-practice movement analysis, a gap that often translates into missed talent, misdiagnosed rehab, and higher injury risk. KineMo levels this by bringing a clinically validated platform, only requiring a phone and no wearables or calibration. The technology delivers peer-reviewed kinematics across a 33-joint skeleton in 3D, turning club footage, rehab videos, or match film into actionable data for coaches and medical staff.

Expanding the Ecosystem: Milan, Irish Tech, and Global Collaboration

KineMo’s Italian tour continued in Milan, where the team joined other standout Irish sports tech businesses for a market mission tied to Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026. The event, led by Enterprise Ireland, gave KineMo direct access to Olympic officials, ministry representatives, space medicine researchers, and leading kinematics academics.

What began within Trinity College Dublin, as a research thread exploring rugby head injury assessment, now breathes a spectrum of disciplines. The KineMo core AI, capable of extracting force and joint movement from video, is being iterated for use cases in yoga, pilates, gym, remote physiotherapy, and broadcasting. These are not just lateral moves; they’re part of a grander vision to break the silo of high-performance motion tracking and return it to the everyday athlete, rehab professional, or remote coach.

ESA BIC Ireland: Space Medicine Meets Sport Science

Perhaps most symbolically, KineMo recently joined the ESA BIC Ireland incubation program, making its single-camera motion platform part of European astronaut screening, in-flight exercise monitoring, and post-mission rehabilitation. Partnering with the European Space Agency moves KineMo’s AI out of the sports hall and onto the International Space Station, where every movement pattern is a data point in keeping astronauts safe and healthy over long-duration missions.

ESA’s Space Medicine Office described the collaboration as an advance in “resource-efficient assessment of pre, in and post-mission astronaut movement patterns.” For KineMo, and by extension, for every coach or clinician monitoring movement in football or rugby, it’s both validation and opportunity: if the tech is good enough for space medicine, it’s likely robust and adaptable enough for club athlete care.

The Science: Validated Motion Analysis at Scale

KineMo’s published work reinforces its credibility. Trials using multicamera setups for contact scenarios and single-camera video for common strength and rehab exercises showed error margins comparable to gold standard lab outputs. Applying open-source pose estimation and proprietary learning algorithms, the platform can lift 2D joint markers into 3D space. Tests with Vicon systems and mobile phones returned small errors in knee angle and torso metrics, confirming the tech’s accuracy and reliability out in the field.

For sports like football, where injury patterns, return-to-play decisions, and load management are all contingent on movement quality, KineMo’s model enables clubs to run mass screenings, establish robust kinematic baselines, and maintain objective tracking throughout an athlete’s career. For Australia, whose geographically dispersed talent pipeline often makes in-person testing unfeasible, remote video-based motion analysis could spell a revolution in player welfare and recruitment.

The Road Ahead: Integrations, Gamification, and Scaling

Looking ahead, KineMo has positioned itself to integrate directly with partner platforms, offering longitudinal tracking, remote consults, gamified skill monitoring, and population-level screening for youth and senior athletes. Its ability to quantify and visualise movement is already influencing rehabilitation protocols and talent frameworks in European football, but also in allied sectors like healthcare, broadcasting, and at-home fitness.

For Australian football, the lesson is clear. Open innovation isn’t just for the Champions League. Its application has become increasingly relevant for every club, physiotherapy clinic, and federation seeking efficient, scalable athlete monitoring. KineMo’s rise signals a new era where peer-reviewed, lab-grade movement analysis is as close as your smartphone.

Clubs willing to invest now in these solutions will not only improve athlete health but will be at the forefront of a transformation. Objective data will be what underpins all key decisions about player recruitment, return to play, and long-term athlete development. The next decade of sport will belong to those ready to act, test, and iterate and it’s up to clubs in Australia whether to embrace the change or fall behind.

Ochy and Juventus Forward: How AI Biomechanics Is Reshaping Elite Performance

In sports technology, evolution is rarely linear. The story of Ochy’s journey from running retail to global football is proof that the right bet, on athletes’ movement and real, usable data, can fundamentally shift the landscape.

For stakeholders in Australia’s football, performance and tech sectors, Ochy’s rapid rise in 2025 and its recent partnering with Juventus FC in 2026 is a window into where athlete monitoring and retail technology are headed.

Scaling Insights: Ochy’s Breakout Year

Over the past year, Ochy has infiltrated key segments in the running industry, carving a presence at Paris, London, Berlin, and Frankfurt marathons, and finding its tech preferred by a spectrum of runners, coaches, retailers, and medical professionals. Through strong showings at VivaTech, CES, ISPO, and the Running Industry Alliance Summit, Ochy’s team grew as fast as its presence, validating the bet that running, like every sport rooted in movement, deserves better, more actionable biomechanical insight.

This wasn’t a single-shot innovation. In 2025, feature launches mattered. Back-view analysis unlocked new clinical insight into pelvis control and knee alignment, bringing science to runners during shoes-on demos at expos and in-store. The proprietary Shoe Recommendation Engine reimagined fitting: translating gait data into smart recommendations reduced guesswork for both runners and retailers, giving shops the power to offer data-backed advice. Ochy’s admin panel and shoe model management brought scalable control, inventory mapping and data tracking to retailers, sealing the loop between analysis, product, and the consumer experience.

From Demo App to Connected Ecosystem

The future shift will be a seamless blend between product and infrastructure. With a connected Web App, Ochy finally became an ecosystem: retailers, brands, and performance clinics could seamlessly move from mobile gait analysis to web-based management.

By the numbers, the results were compelling. More than 85,000 analyses in 2025, an average of 102 customers assessed each month per running shop, and runners using the system on themselves three times every thirty days. Side-view analysis remained the most popular tool; user feedback drove a sharper brand and clearer message. Partnerships with HOKA, Runners Need, England Athletics, and more signalled that Ochy’s core premise had strong industry buy-in.

A Mission That Became Personal and Global

Ochy’s founding story still resonates through its technology. CEO and co-founder Khaldon Evans’s injuries as a college athlete underpinned the platform’s core belief: movement science should not be reserved for elite labs or expensive research centres. Real prevention and performance require objective insight, and lack of access shouldn’t compromise health or career progression. This message- that running form matters, moved from blog posts and marathon expos into retail, and now, with its deal in Turin, across the football pitch.

AI in Motion: The Partnership with Juventus

The leap into elite football began at Allianz Stadium in February 2026, as Ochy was named an official partner within the Juventus Forward innovation initiative. Chosen from dozens of startups, being part of Juventus’ Forward Squad marks not just commercial success, but institutional validation: a professional club, renowned for its vision and resources, was betting on AI-powered markerless biomechanics.

For Ochy, the transition is logical. Football is the ultimate application for running science, it’s a sport defined by repetitive sprints, high-load pivoting, changes of direction, and cumulative stress over long seasons. Movement mechanics drive output and underpin injury prevention.

With Ochy, footballers and staff access lab-quality analysis using only a camera. The system translates match or training videos into insights about gait efficiency, asymmetry, and injury risk, all powered by proprietary AI. What was confined to the running shop or the track now becomes central to decisions about player rehab, boot selection, and long-term load monitoring.

Why This Partnership Matters for Football and Beyond

Juventus’ choice to integrate startups like Ochy demonstrates tech’s new role at elite clubs: not just for post-game data but for all-year-round management. The pitch is now the laboratory, and decisions in coaching, physio, and even retail reflect biomechanical data.

For Australia, there are direct implications. NPL and A-League clubs, currently facing constraints in resources and analytics staffing, can benefit from democratised biomechanics. Markerless solutions such as Ochy’s break the dependency on wearables, making high-quality insight available during regular training on public grounds. In Australia’s multicultural, injury-prone football ecosystem, AI-powered, multilingual, and field-tested technology stands to drive better player outcomes, sharper recruitment, and improved return-to-play protocols.

A Retail Revolution for Sport

Ochy’s shoe recommendation engine and admin tools make specialist retail a central part of the performance loop. By tying gait analysis to in-store inventory, Ochy ensures that runners and footballers alike get the shoe, support, and advice that fit their actual, measured movement.

The partnership with adidas via the adiClub program introduced Ochy’s insights to loyalty customers worldwide, proving that biomechanics is as relevant to the mass market as it is to the professional clinic. By allowing adiClub members access to Ochy’s analysis with redeemed points, the company blurred lines between community, data, and product.

If AI is to be trusted as the next frontier for sport, Ochy’s work in 2025 and its expansion into elite football in 2026 represent the standard. The transition from running to football is not just logical; it was inevitable, and every stakeholder in Australian sport should pay attention to what comes next.

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