DAZN's Local Rights Land Grab: Kings, Pistons Deals Show Streamer's RSN Playbook

DAZN is widening its footprint in North American local sports, striking direct-to-consumer streaming agreements with the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and the NBA's Detroit Pistons, alongside a separate deal with Super League Basketball, according to SportsMint Media and Sports Business Journal.

For the Kings, DAZN's DTC rights run for the 2026-27 season and operate alongside Angels Broadcast Television (ABTV), which remains the team's linear TV home and is carried on DIRECTV and Fubo. DAZN's offer undercuts that path on price: a "Kings Standard" tier runs $19.99 a month or $119.99 a season for two simultaneous streams at one location, while a "Kings Ultimate" tier at $24.99 a month or $139.99 a season adds five streams, two locations, and multiview, per Streaming Smarter's breakdown of the subscription options.

The Pistons deal, confirmed by Sports Business Journal, makes DAZN the team's exclusive streaming home for the 2026-27 season, extending a trend of NBA teams moving away from traditional regional sports network deals and toward direct-to-consumer streaming built around single-team subscriptions.

DAZN's NHL footprint is still thin — the platform now carries a handful of clubs including the Washington Capitals, New Jersey Devils, Buffalo Sabres, New York Islanders, and New York Rangers, plus the Kings. But its NBA presence has grown faster, with "several" teams already having made the jump to DAZN-hosted local streaming, according to Streaming Smarter's team tracking.

The bigger picture: DAZN, primarily known globally for boxing, Serie A, and international football rights, has spent the past two years quietly repositioning itself as a local U.S. sports distribution layer, filling gaps left as regional sports networks lose cable subscribers and, in cases like Diamond Sports Group's bankruptcy, entire ownership structures. Teams no longer tied to must-carry cable deals have leverage to shop DTC arrangements directly.

That strategy cuts both ways for DAZN. Local team subscriptions monetize hardcore fans directly and build DAZN's U.S. subscriber base team by team, but they lack the reach of national cable bundles and don't include league-wide national broadcasts — Kings subscribers, for instance, still need ESPN Select for out-of-market NHL games shown nationally.

The Kings' continued dual-track approach — keeping ABTV for linear reach while adding DAZN for cord-cutters — is likely to become the template other clubs follow rather than an outright switch, since teams are wary of abandoning older, still-substantial cable audiences even as they chase the growing DTC segment.

For DAZN, each additional local-rights deal builds negotiating leverage for its next round of talks, and signals to leagues and team owners that a global platform with existing football and combat-sports infrastructure can now credibly compete with dedicated North American streaming products like ESPN's DTC app and team-specific efforts elsewhere in the NBA and NHL.