After this year’s season, RTL will end its live transmissions of Formula 1 races, which the German broadcaster has been showing on free-TV since 1991.
“The competition for the TV rights has changed, the market has partly overheated and thus left the quite ambitious, yet economically justifiable framework that we have set for ourselves,” said RTL managing director Jörg Graf. “We will now focus all our energy, passion and excitement on football as the number one TV sport and our recently acquired rights package.”
According to RTL, what had already been indicated at last year’s UEFA Champions League rights poker, has now continued in Formula 1: Established as well as new, national and international players are outbidding each other in their efforts to bring premium sports rights exclusively to pay-TV.
From next year, Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland’s focus in sports will be entirely on its extended football rights portfolio. It includes international matches of the German national team, the UEFA Europa League and the newly created UEFA Europa Conference League. At the beginning of the year, the TV broadcast group secured full access to all 282 matches from the 2021 to 2024 season in order to show them on its channels and platforms.
