Borussia Dortmund and FC Bayern Munich are the two biggest clubs in the Bundesliga. © APA/afp / INA FASSBENDER

Bundesliga earns billions from TV marketing

The German Football League will receive a total of 2025 billion euros from the sale of the national TV rights for the 26/2028 to 29/4,484 seasons.

05 December 2024

From: dpa

This is an increase of 84 million euros compared to the current figures, as the DFL announced after the general meeting at Frankfurt Airport. The 36 first and second division clubs receive 1,121 billion euros per year.

"This is a great result," said DFL spokesman Hans-Joachim Watzke at the press conference: "Today is a good day for German football." The result will "make the whole of Europe sit up and take notice," said Watzke.

The total revenue for the period 2021/22 to 2024/25 amounts to 4,4 billion euros. Thanks to the slight increase of two percent, the Bundesliga "continues to have the second strongest media contract of all football leagues worldwide in terms of national media rights," said DFL Managing Director Steffen Merkel.

Want to watch all the games? Two subscriptions required!

More interesting for fans than the billions in revenue of the Bundesliga clubs are the league's TV partners in the next four seasons. Anyone who wants to see all of their favorite club's games in the first division will still need two subscriptions in the future, as Sky and DAZN have each secured two packages for the pay-per-view sector.

In future, Sky will broadcast the game on Friday evening as well as all games on Saturday individually - including the top game at 18.30 p.m. The pay-TV broadcaster will also offer its customers all 2nd Bundesliga games live.

Hugo Ekitike (left) plays for Eintracht Frankfurt. © ANSA / RONALD WITTEK

The internet sports channel DAZN, which is also subject to a fee, has secured the first league on Sunday as well as the conference call on Saturday, which was previously run by the competition and – before the renaming from Premiere to Sky – was invented there.

Sky is "very satisfied"

"We have 87 percent of the games live, which is more than in the last eight years, and 80 percent of all matches are exclusive. I'm very happy with that," Sky Germany boss Barny Mills told the German Press Agency. "We wanted to have by far the most games, and we wanted to show the top games - and we achieved that," he said, commenting on the three pay-TV packages for the 1st and 2nd leagues.

On free TV, the most important packages went to ARD and ZDF. The first summaries on Saturday afternoon on free TV will continue to be shown on Das Erste in the "Sportschau". In the evening, Das Erste will show further highlights in the "Sportstudio", including the first free TV images from the top first division match.

ProSiebenSat.1 has again acquired a package with nine live games on free-to-air television. This includes three first division broadcasts and the Supercup. RTL secured the free TV rights for the top game of the second division on Saturday evening, which will be broadcast on Sport2 until the end of the current season.