Sky Deutschland has kept most of the Bundesliga pay-TV rights in the tender for the 2017/18 to 2020/21 seasons, but Discovery subsidiary Eurosport has managed to secure a key package.
Sky Deutschland, formerly the sole pay-TV rights holder, will be able to show the Bundesliga games on Saturday, Sunday and Monday as well as for the first time all matches of the second-division Bundesliga – in total 572 of each season’s 612 games.
Eurosport won the remaining matches: From 2017, the sports broadcaster will show the 30 Friday games, five Sunday and Monday games each, the first and second division relegation as well as the Supercup.
The scenario fulfils the no single buyer rule stipulated by the Federal Cartel Office according to which there must be no single rights holder for all games.
As Eurosport is part of the Sky Deutschland platform with its offers, Sky subscribers will most probably continue to be able to watch all Bundesliga games live.
On free-to-air TV, public broadcaster ARD will continue to report about the Bundesliga matches as part of its traditional Sportschau highlights programme each Saturday at 18.30 CET – and ZDF within its Aktuelles Sportstudio programme on Saturday evening. ZDF also acquired free-to-air rights of selected games such as the season’s opening match and the Supercup.
The summaries of the Bundesliga games will continue to be shown on Sundays by commercial free-to-air channel Sport1.
The rights for online highlights coverage 40 minutes after the end of each game, currently held by Axel Springer and shown on its website BILD.de, were secured by UK-based Perform Group for the new sports streaming platform it plans to launch later this year.
The radio rights for FM were again acquired by ARD while Amazon secured the internet radio rights, ousting former rights holder Sport1.fm.
For German football association Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL), the auction was financially lucrative: The total income from the rights sold for the four seasons amounts to €4.64 billion – 85% more than in the previous period.
