Germany’s national football association Deutsche Fußball-Liga (DFL) has announced the tender for the allocation of the national TV rights covering the games of the first and second division Bundesliga and the Supercup for the 2017/18 to 2020/21 seasons.
The tender comprises the rights for the live and time-shifted transmissions on satellite, DTT, cable/IPTV, web and mobile.
DFL will commence the tender and inform about the structure of the rights packages as well as the exact procedure once the German anti-trust authority Bundeskartellamt has closed its probe of the rights sales model on which the tender is based.
A second tender will be opened for the national radio rights.
All companies interested in acquiring the rights can now register on the Bundesliga website for the TV rights and radio rights tenders.
The international rights will be allocated in a separate bidding process which DFL announced in February 2016.
At the last tender for the domestic Bundesliga rights in 2012, Sky Deutschland won all pay-TV rights while public broadcaster ARD received the free-TV rights. Deutsche Telekom which previously held the IPTV rights went empty-handed and subsequently closed down its Bundesliga service LIGA total!.
It is expected in the industry that Telekom will again take part in the tender along with broadcast groups RTL, ProSiebenSat.1, Constantin Medien (Sport1), Eurosport (Discovery) and UK-based Perform Group. The company which operates sports portal Spox.com recently secured the Premier League rights for Germany, ousting previous rights holder Sky Deutschland. Perform Group wants to launch a live sports OTT service in Germany and other markets this year.
