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The Pacers formalized their exclusive local broadcast deal with DAZN Thursday, with over-the-air, in-front-of-the-paywall and marketing components designed to ease the transition for unfamiliar fans. DAZN may be well-known globally for its boxing and World Cup portfolio, but is only now breaking through in the U.S. -- where this season as many as one-third of the NBA will end up on the platform. The Pacers, as a result, have drawn up a template for 2026-27 that emphasizes awareness, reach and an early-bird discount that could have customers paying as little as $1 per game. Specifically, 22 of the Pacers’ 71 non-national broadcasts will be streamed for free in front of the paywall on the DAZN app, with 15 of those being simulcast by a yet-to-be-announced local channel. If fans sign up for the $119.99 season package by Oct. 15, the annual price will drop 50% to $59.99, essentially a dollar a broadcast. Considering Pacers games last season on FanDuel Sports Network were telecast on higher Spectrum and Comcast cable tiers -- which, according to CEO and team president Mel Raines, meant “maybe 30% of our addressable market could find our games” -- the DAZN deal is a reboot that expands the audience to basically 100%. In the past several months, following Main Street Sports Group’s collapse, the franchise also received broadcast pitches from Fubo, Victory+, OTA channels and the Texas Rangers Sports Network. DAZN offered what industry sources believe is an $8M minimum guarantee for the 2026-27 season, a 50-50 ad sales revenue share and roughly $7M-$8M more in equity if the team returns to DAZN in 2027-28. Last season, before Main Street began defaulting on payments, the Pacers’ rights fee was roughly $17M, industry sources confirmed. “It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster,” Raines said. “It has been for everybody. Obviously, we’ve been talking to the other 12 [former Main Street] teams on a regular basis, and if there was an easy, quick, obvious solution, everybody would’ve picked that and announced a long time ago. And so I think we got to a point probably two months ago where I pulled everybody into a conference room ... and I said, ‘What are we actually trying to accomplish here, guys?’ And the answer was we want to get our basketball games in as many of our fans’ hands as we can. That may be in their home or literally in their hand.” The latter is a clear reference to hand-held streaming devices, which is DAZN’s specialty -- but also not the customary way to view Pacers games in previous years. That’s partly why the Pacers pushed for 15 games OTA, will allow season-ticket holders to stream games for free and were in favor of a multi-million-dollar commitment from DAZN to market the app across the team’s home television territory, which includes Indiana, Kentucky, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. “One of the components of every deal we’ve made is a significant marketing budget that our teams will manage to make sure that we’re both driving overall awareness to the availability of the product to fans at each market, but also the value proposition,” said Walker Jacobs, the Global Chief Revenue Officer and President USA at DAZN. The deal includes a mutual exit clause, a must with the NBA’s aggregated hub likely arriving by the 2027-28 season. In fact, all of DAZN’s exclusive deals -- the announced ones with the Pacers and T’Wolves and the upcoming exclusive ones with the Cavaliers, Spurs and Grizzlies -- all contain out clauses if teams flee for the centralized NBA hub. Presumably, DAZN’s current digital-only deals with the Knicks and Nets and pending streaming deals with the Magic and Hornets, include the same exit clause. But with those nine teams on the platform for at least this coming season -- and with the Wizards and potentially the Suns and Nuggets also joining with non-exclusive deals -- DAZN may essentially already be a pseudo hub. In some ways, it turns this season into a DAZN trial for the league. Although YouTube is the frontrunner to house the NBA’s impending platform, Raines acknowledged “another reason why DAZN was so attractive to us is because they’re a potential partner in that aggregated solution.” And Jacobs confirmed DAZN remains in conversations with the league about housing the hub. “A big part of the motivation right now,” he said, “was our ability to start working with as many teams as we can and to demonstrate to those teams and to the league overall that we’re a formidable player and we’ve got a great product and that they are somebody we’re interested in working with.” Range Sports advised DAZN on the Pacers deal, while PS&E handled the arrangement in-house.