DAZN makes its Australian statement as Foxtel gives way to Kayo

If DAZN wanted to make a statement about its intentions in Australia, it chose an appropriately enormous stage on Thursday night.

Hundreds of media buyers, marketers and industry executives poured into The Cutaway at Barangaroo for the second upfront since DAZN took ownership of Foxtel Group, in a cavernous space filled with giant screens, booming production and, over the next two hours, some equally enormous claims.

Among them: that the business is Australia's biggest media company by revenue and earnings, its biggest streaming company and the country's largest non-government investor in sport.

But behind the superlatives was a more consequential message. DAZN is putting its name on its Australian media operation.

Foxtel Media has officially become DAZN Media+, marking one of the clearest signs yet of how the global sports streaming giant intends to reshape the Australian business it acquired last year.

The new advertising brand will represent Kayo SPORTS, BINGE, Foxtel and Foxtel Go, combining Foxtel Media's existing Australian operation with DAZN's global technology and advertising infrastructure.

It is more than a cosmetic change. Across the night, DAZN and Foxtel executives repeatedly framed the acquisition as the beginning of a new era for the business, one built around DAZN's global technology platform and Kayo's increasingly dominant position within its Australian sports portfolio.

DAZN Media+ CEO Mark Frain said the company had completed a full platform migration within 12 months of the acquisition, describing it as the most significant transformation undertaken by an Australian media company ever.

Since migrating onto DAZN's platform, the Australian business has launched 10 new product features.

“The pipes are bigger, the data is smarter, and the tools, they're just way better,” Frain told the room. “And the global learnings from markets around the world are feeding directly back into what we're building here.”

The rebrand also comes as another of Foxtel's best-known names begins to recede.

Foxtel Group CEO Patrick Delany confirmed Fox Sports and Kayo Sports will progressively come together under the Kayo brand over the coming months, bringing three decades of Fox Sports branding closer to an end.

Fox Footy will become Kayo Footy, Fox League will become Kayo League and Fox Cricket will become Kayo Cricket.

“Over the coming months, these two powerhouse brands will come together as one,” Delany said.

“Fox Sports' extraordinary legacy, expertise, storytelling, combined with Kayo's digital capability, accessibility and fan connection. Together, they will create an even stronger, sharper and more exciting future for Australian sport.”

The names may be changing, but DAZN was keen to stress the scale of the business underneath them.

Frain and Delany told the audience DAZN was Australia's biggest media company by revenue and earnings and its biggest streaming company, claiming it generates more streams than all of Australia's free-to-air platforms combined.

Across sport, entertainment and news, the group said it reaches more than 15 million Australians.

It also said Kayo subscriber numbers had reached an all-time high in 2026, with total users up 10% year-on-year and viewing hours per subscriber increasing more than 6%.

Exactly how one defines Australia's “biggest media company” is open to interpretation. On Thursday night, however, DAZN was in little mood for qualifications.

The company also put considerable emphasis on its financial commitment to Australian sport, saying it invests more than $1 billion annually in sports rights and production and describing itself as Australia's largest non-government funder of sport.

DAZN operates across more than 200 markets globally, claims an audience of 300 million viewers and delivers more than 90,000 live sporting events each year.

For Frain, attaching that global operation to the former Foxtel Media business changes the proposition it can take to Australian advertisers.

“DAZN Media+ isn't just a new name, it's a declaration of what we can now offer brands across Australia,” he said.

“We will continue to serve our partners, brands and agencies with the same passion and commitment, now backed by smarter tools and a more powerful global ecosystem.”

The first examples of that proposition were unveiled on Thursday, including Club Kayo, an always-on creator network spanning AFL, NRL, cricket and motorsport, and an AI-powered agentic trading system that will allow buyer agents to discover inventory, access pricing, negotiate proposals and query live campaign performance.

The latter is due to go live in 2027.

But the individual product launches almost felt secondary to the bigger statement being made.

There were smaller ways DAZN could have told Australia's advertising industry that Foxtel Media had a new name. Instead it chose one of Sydney's most imposing event spaces and spent two hours talking about scale, investment, technology and permanence.

More than a year after buying one of Australia's most established media businesses, DAZN is increasingly putting its own brand front and centre. Foxtel Media is now DAZN Media+. Fox Sports is giving way to Kayo.

And Australia's newest global media owner appears increasingly comfortable putting its name on the door.