The awarding of DFL media rights every four years is actually a really big topic. In times of the corona crisis, however, the allocation of free and pay TV rights to games in the soccer leagues has moved into the background. Also because of the (economically) forced season continuation in the German professional leagues. And yet it is worth taking a closer look at the result of the auction of the Bundesliga TV rights. Because even if you could at first glance portray Sky as a big loser, the bottom line is that it is a completely different preferred media partner in advance.
Sky could only lose
If you take a closer look at the TV rights packages advertised by the DFL, it quickly becomes clear: Sky had no chance of reporting on the Bundesliga from mid-2021 to the same extent as before. Because the DFL not only followed the requirement of the Federal Cartel Office that under no circumstances should only one TV station broadcast live matches of the Bundesliga. In comparison to the media contract still valid in the coming season, the DFL significantly expanded the rights of a potential Sky competitor.
Background: According to the wishes of the DFL, the package D advertised includes all (!) Bundesliga games that take place on Fridays and Sundays. So far, however, it is still possible for Sky to report on individual games that take place on Sunday. As part of the tender for the Bundesliga media rights that has now been completed, the largest German pay-TV broadcaster had to swallow at least one toad. Either do without the top game on Saturday evening (for example Bayern Munich versus Borussia Dortmund) or prefer (probably) to leave the competition to less attractive matches.
They opted for the second variant, even if this means that from mid-2021 onwards they will be less able to report on the Bundesliga as a whole than before. A right decision, because it is now clearly regulated: You will only see the Bundesliga on Saturday for at least four more years on Sky, for the games on Friday and Sunday you will need an additional subscription from DAZN.
Whether it stays at 11.99 euros per month for the DAZN subscription? Still unclear. Because the DFL does not reveal how much was paid for the individual TV packages. The amount that each media partner transfers to the DFL is also strictly confidential. “Sponsors” reports 595 million euros that Sky pays per season and 300 million euros that flow from DAZN to the DFL accounts. One thing is clear: According to the new media contract, the DFL collects an average of 1.1 billion euros per season. That is a little less than before.
Bundesliga on Amazon? Don’t eat!
For me, the much bigger loser is not Sky, but Amazon. Because from the 2021/2022 season, the internet giant must completely remove the Bundesliga from its own Prime offer. In advance, Amazon was considered an interested and promising candidate for the above-mentioned rights package D. But in the end, Amazon did not secure a single one of the DFL packages. Not even the Bundesliga audio broadcasts on the Internet will be part of the Prime offer in the future. In future, the ARD will be able to implement all broadcasts on the Internet here. Likewise, of course, the FM transmissions on stations such as WDR 2, NDR 2 or Bayern 1.
Why Amazon is no longer there? There is no official information from the company about this. Perhaps Amazon’s rights packages were simply too expensive in the end. In the course of customer surveys, too few people may also have expressed an interest in the Bundesliga as part of a more expensive Prime Premium subscription. And Amazon may even have noticed in the past few weeks that interest in even free Bundesliga games on Prime Video was well below their own expectations.
The financial scope is getting smaller
Either way: The end of Amazon in Bundesliga broadcasts shows that the trees for the DFL do not grow in the sky. At present, Bundesliga media rights for the German-speaking region obviously cannot achieve much more than the average EUR 1.1 billion per season. Corona or not. In other countries such as England or Italy, income from football TV rights has recently declined.
And that has consequences. Because one or the other Bundesliga club will have to tighten their belts in the future. The same applies to greedy player advisors and probably also to many Bundesliga players themselves. Their salaries have skyrocketed in the past few years. Something should change now. And at least that can actually only be a sensible development in the billion dollar soccer Bundesliga business.
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