Sky has to share the rights to live German football with Discovery Communications Inc., though "will broadcast the vast majority of the games" after the league raised $5.3B in the country’s biggest such auction to date, according to Stefan Nicola of BLOOMBERG. Sky won the rights to show the Bundesliga matches on Saturday and Sunday -- "the most important days -- across its TV channels and the web, and will broadcast 572 live games" from the summer of '17 until mid-'21. Sky rose as much as 3.6% in London trading. Discovery won the right for the Friday evening game on its Eurosport channel after the Bundesliga "introduced a so-called no-single buyer rule," meaning Sky was not "allowed to retain its current ownership of all live-match rights." The rule, demanded by the country's telecoms regulator, does not "necessarily mean consumers will have to sign up for more than one pay-TV product to see all the games, as companies can sell each other sub-licenses." The auction proceeds of €4.64B ($5.3B), or about €1.16B ($1.3B) a season, for "domestic rights make it the biggest ever" in the football-crazed country, where Sky has "relied on Germans’ passion for teams such as Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund to become the dominant pay-TV provider." Sky said that it will pay an average of €876M ($992M) a year for the rights, up from €486M ($551M) a year "under its existing contract." Perform Group "won the rights to show Bundesliga highlight clips online, a package currently held by Axel Springer SE." Perform "previously snatched from Sky the contract to show the Premier League in Germany" (BLOOMBERG, 6/9). REUTERS' Ten Wolde & Prodhan reported Bundesliga CEO Christian Seifert said that the total for the four seasons from '17-18 "represented an 85 percent increase on the previous four years." He said, "I am happy with the sum." He added that "the figure was likely to exceed" €1.5B ($1.7B) in the final season once int'l rights and proceeds from two as yet unsold packages were included. Germany is Europe's second-richest football league after the English Premier League, which secured a record £5.14B ($7.4B) for domestic rights for the three years from '16-19 from Sky and BT. Close "to half of Germany's population of 81 million watches the Bundesliga on television, with many viewing highlights packages on free-to-air TV." Sky Deutschland has 4.5 million subscribers in Germany and Austria (REUTERS, 6/9).
HITTING THE BILLION MARK: The German Football League (DFL) generated a record result in the tender of national media rights and has exceeded for the first time the threshold of, on average, €1B ($1.13B) per season. There has been an increase of 285% since the '05-06 season. The summaries of the Saturday and Sunday matches of the Bundesliga will also be able to be seen in the future in the ARD. The ZDF was successful in the area of live rights in free-TV, including the Supercup as well as the home and away rounds for the opening match, in addition to the secondary use of the Saturday matches. Two packages have not yet been awarded: the highlight summaries of the Bundesliga 2 in free-TV on Friday and Sunday as well as a package for a follow-up free-TV summary on Monday evening for all Bundesliga matches in the just concluded match day (DFL). ESPN's Stephan Uersfeld reported DFL President Reinhard Rauball said that the new rights deal "is good news for German professional football," and added that the exact allocation of the €4.64B will be decided next season (ESPN, 6/9). Bayern Munich CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge: "The Bundesliga can be very happy with the new TV deal. It perfectly exemplifies the quality of the Bundesliga and it is an important step towards their international strategy. I would particularly like to thank the DFL, Christian Seifert and his team for their impressive work in making this happen" (SBD Global).
A NEW ORDER: Sky's monopoly of Bundesliga's live broadcast rights is gone after pan-European sports broadcaster Eurosport acquired a small number of games from '17-21. Eurosport CEO Peter Hutton told SBD Global the pan-European broadcaster certainly benefited from the newly introduced "no-single-buyer rule," which prohibited a single buyer from obtaining all live broadcast rights. "I think it did help us," he said. "We certainly saw it as an opportunity. I think we've taken the opportunity that the no-single-buyer rule offered. For someone to come in and go head-to-head with Sky for every package of rights is a tough ask. Putting in a no-single-buyer rule allowed other players including ourselves to look at the rights more seriously." Eurosport will present 40 live Bundesliga matches per season, as well as the German Supercup and four relegation games on a non-exclusive basis. Eurosport went specifically after this rights package as it consists of primetime matches on Fridays and select Sunday afternoon and Monday night matches, Hutton said. He declined to disclose financial terms of the deal (HJ Mai, SBD Global).
