Bundesliga domestic TV rights fall by €200m in post-pandemic deal
The Bundesliga has suffered a fall in the value of its TV rights, after it became the first major European league to agree a new broadcast deal since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The German top flight, whose rights are sold alongside those of the 2. Bundesliga, has secured a new agreement with Sky and the streaming company Dazn for its domestic rights – including Austria and Switzerland – worth €4.4bn (£4bn) over four years. That represents a fall of €200m on the previous deal, which expires this summer.
The Bundesliga became the first European league to return to competition in mid-May and now has set a broadcasting benchmark other competitions will be watching and attempting to analyse. The English Premier League is scheduled to put its own three-year domestic rights cycle out to tender this year.
Sky will show all matches played on a Saturday, a total of 200 games a season. But they will be joined by Dazn, who will have exclusive rights to 106 games on Friday and Sunday. Dazn’s deal is one of the largest number of matches in a major football league to be secured by a streaming broadcaster.
Nine league matches were also sold to the free-to-air broadcaster ProSieben/Sat1
but the new deal means a drop in the level of competition for rights with the Discovery-owned channel, Eurosport, dropping out. There was also no entry into the German market for Amazon, who had been touted to add the Bundesliga to the Premier League in their portfolio of football rights.
With broadcasters facing their own challenges from the coronavirus pandemic, including a fall in subscription numbers and a collapse in advertising revenue, a small fall in the value of the Bundesliga’s rights could be regarded as success for the German Football League (DFL). On the other hand it stands in sharp contrast to the previous deal, which ran from 2017-21 and helped the DFL grow its broadcast revenues by 85%.
The DFL chief executive, Christian Seifert, said the new deal achieved the league’s main objectives. “No company will have all the live rights for the Bundesliga. It was an unusual situation for everyone involved and I think we achieved a decent result.”