Germans See Wimbledon Only On Pay-TV

German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF have "failed their duties" and will not cover Wimbledon on free-to-air TV, according to Reinhard Schüssler of DER WESTEN. Pay-TV channel Sky is the only German channel that broadcasts from the All England Lawn Championships. The oldest of the four major tennis tournaments is "even without a German contender one of the most important sporting events in the world." The reason why ARD and ZDF did not spend millions on broadcasting rights is that tennis does not "produce the same ratings as it did in the '80s and '90s when Boris Becker and Steffi Graf" were still playing. The two public broadcasters do not even have a short "15-minute highlight show" in their program. This makes German sports fans "really angry," especially after decades in which both channels "spent millions to subsidize German pro boxing" (DER WESTEN, 6/27).