INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA – FEBRUARY 03: A detail view of the Indiana Pacers logo after the game against the Utah Jazz at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on February 03, 2026 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Bobby Goddin/Getty Images)
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INDIANAPOLIS – DAZN (pronounced Da-Zone) is the new streaming home for Indiana Pacers basketball.
The Pacers announced the partnership on Thursday morning, providing answers to fans who wondered where to watch the team this season. Main Street Sports Group, who owned the previous broadcast for the team, is officially winding down. The Pacers needed a new partner and picked DAZN over about a dozen options.
“This partnership is about making Pacers basketball more accessible than ever before,” Pacers Sports & Entertainment President and CEO of Pacers Sports & Entertainment Mel Raines said in a statement.
Accessibility was a major talking point on Wednesday as the Pacers explained their decision to stream games on DAZN. Chief Commercial Officer Joey Graziano detailed that in 2010, in the prime of cable, about 88% of their market had access to paid television. Now? That’s down to about 30%. That signals to Graziano that fans are accessing their lives much more via the internet, so putting the Pacers primarily there felt like the best way to reach fans.
“Having something that felt accessible across a variety of different modes and channels,” he said. “And so that means your phone, that also may mean the tablet that you have, it may mean your gaming console, it may mean your smart television. And we wanted something that would meet our fans exactly where they are.”
In the first year of the partnership between DAZN and the Pacers, 22 games and four preseason outings will be streamed for free on the DAZN app. 15 of those 22 games will also air on a local over-the-air broadcast partner, which will be determined well before the season begins. That deal will be made between the air-the-air partner and DAZN.
The Pacers, and other NBA teams that ultimately end up streaming on DAZN, will have their own hub right in the DAZN app. That’s where fans can sign up and stream games. Pacers on DAZN will launch later this summer prior to the 2026-27 NBA season.
DAZN will offer a seven-day free trial as well as an Early Bird Season Pass – that will come with a price tag of $59.99 and will unlock every paid game. Once that special ends, the price of the Pacers environment will be $119.99 for the year or $19.99 per month.
“With [Tyrese Haliburton] coming back, the start of our season is going to be pretty anticipated,” Graziano said of the free trial. “We wanted to make sure that that was going to be available.”
Graziano also made note of the price points and that with the Early Bird Season Pass, it’s about $1 per game. A lot of thought went into the pricing model, something that DAZN has experience with because of their wide variety of offerings.
“Things are nuanced from a market-by-market perspective, but [we] put a lot of certain research using data we have on performance across the board and other sort of similar scenarios,” DAZN Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development Zander Berlinski said of the pricing choices. He expects the price to remain similar in future years as well but acknowledged that they will evaluate what did and didn’t work for fans after the first season. The 15 over-the-air games will remain beyond 2026-27.
DAZN logo displayed on a phone screen and a website displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on April 30, 2021. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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By going with the streaming route, the Pacers can easily reach fans within their local bubble in new ways. Their home television territory includes Indiana, Kentucky, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. Fans in that area will be able to watch the team through the DAZN app.
DAZN is a digital-first company, and they have no cable integration plans with the Pacers at this time. Their 15 over-the-air games will be available on linear television, and the Pacers are aware of the challenges that may come with that.
“Of course we’re concerned about it. We’re concerned about all of our fans, and we’re going to be incredibly responsive to any concerns that come about for that,” Graziano said when asked what the team’s older fans might say about this partnership. He then pointed to DAZN’s 24/7 tech support as a resource. “We’re going to be responsible for all of those fans. And so we’ve got certainly thoughts to think about, how do we make sure that those fans are able to download the app to be able to get it onto their devices? We’ve got an entire marketing and digital team who’s hyper-focused on fan feedback that comes from our press release, and we will be responsive to fans who have concerns about their ability to be able to access.”
The deal between the Pacers and DAZN is five years in length, but the NBA required teams to have a potential out in their broadcast contracts in case an aggregated solution with every team were to arise. “When we were looking at partners, one of the things we wanted to do was… to find somebody who we thought could be what the league refers to as their aggregated solution, where you would aggregate all the teams,” Raines said. “And DAZN is certainly a top potential partner that’s been in the news for that.”
DAZN has a massive global footprint – 300 million users, according to Berlinski – with about 85% of them coming internationally. They are hoping to move into more U.S. markets and have already secured streaming deals with several New York sports teams and the Minnesota Timberwolves, with more NBA announcements yet to come.
Some NBA teams have opted to broadcast their games exclusively over-the-air. There were challenges for the Pacers that kept them from choosing that route.
“Some markets have the opportunity with a Scripps or a Gray to have an empty channel that’s already bought into the lower tier of Comcast or Spectrum or those kinds of channels – DirecTV, Dish. That’s not available in our market right now. As you know, there’s been a lot of consolidation,” Raines explained. “And so unfortunately, we didn’t have that opportunity. But frankly, we wouldn’t have reached… As many people. And so our goal here is to make everyone a fan. We have a company mission.” Accessibility is a big part of that mission.
The Pacers broadcast team of Jeremiah Johnson, Chris Denari, Quinn Buckner, and Eddie Gill will return and call games in the coming season, which begins in about two months. And for the Pacers, it will begin on a new streaming home.
“Local sports broadcasting has evolved significantly over the last decade and so has the way people watch games,” Raines said. “DAZN is a global leader in sports streaming, and its premium viewing experience gives our fans more flexibility and affordable access to Pacers basketball, while creating more opportunities to connect with the team.”
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