Austrian commercial broadcaster Servus TV will no longer transmit Bundesliga matches from pay-TV operator Sky on its free-to-air (FTA) channel.
“Servus TV has withdrawn from the cooperation with Sky and thus no longer shows German Bundesliga matches on free-TV. This is due to strong differences in the choice of games,” a Servus TV spokeswoman told German industry magazine DWDL.
A spokesman of Sky Österreich added: “We regret Servus TV’s decision to withdraw from the cooperation. We haven’t been able to reach an agreement on the choice of games.”
Sky Österreich and Servus TV announced their cooperation at the beginning of February 2018. The free-to-air channel was to show six top Bundesliga matches live for viewers in Austria this season by taking over the broadcast signal from Sky.
Only the matches FC Bayern Munich vs. FC Schalke 04 (10/02/2018) and RB Leipzig vs. Borussia Dortmund (03/03/2018) were actually transmitted. The also announced game RB Leipzig against FC Bayern Munich (18/03/2018) was not shown on Servus TV.
When announcing the cooperation, Christine Scheil, Managing Director of Sky Östereich, spoke of an “intelligent interaction between pay-TV and free-TV enabling us to present one of our top products to an even broader audience.”
It seems that the fear of devaluing its own product turned out to be stronger than the hopes placed in the mass market appeal of Servus TV.
