Does the DFL dare to embark on a Bundesliga revolution?

For BVB managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke and FC Bayern honorary president Uli Hoeneß, the German Bundesliga could be worth significantly more. But as a result of the Ukraine war, Western Europe in particular experienced a rise in consumer prices, higher wages and significant inflation. The latest quarterly figures from some media companies show that advertising revenue is stagnating or declining. German private broadcasters in particular are able to sell their spots well, given the decline in average reach over the past ten years.

A few weeks ago, Watzke in particular had to expose himself, on the one hand, wanting to demand more and more for football, but being unreasonable that his team Borussia Dortmund had to play for DAZN on Friday evening. Of course, the question arises as to whether a 64-year-old club managing director is currently the right person to be the spokesman for the DFL executive committee. The much younger Donata Hopfen was actually supposed to lead the league until December 31, 2024, but she cleared her desk at the end of 2022. According to information from the well-informed sports press, there were differences with the supervisory board over the strategic direction of the league.

Next year, which begins in six weeks, the German television rights for the years 2025 to 2029 are to be reassigned. The hottest candidate for the Saturday afternoon games and for the top game is of course Sky, whose predecessor has always had live sports in its program. At times only as a stream, which was still frowned upon under “IPTV” at the time, but after a short time the then premiere was again available on cable and via satellite. The question now is which outlets are still needed. The Sky receivers that are currently in circulation can stream all sports offers. However, it cannot be assumed that the league and Sky will forego a transmission channel.

The “no single buyer” rule could be dropped in the upcoming rights tender. This construct was actually introduced so that Sky could not exploit its market power. The bottom line is that the constellation of Sky and the streaming provider DAZN showed that the Bundesliga rights were more expensive than ever before because of the cartel office’s decision. In general, the question arises as to how much decision-making power Sky has in Unterföhring. Is the parent company in London satisfied with Saturday’s performance so far or would the owners from Philadelphia prefer to save billions? What does DAZN actually want? Will billions more be pumped into the market and the sports streaming service will one day be profitable? All participants are still silent.

The allocation of rights for the “Sportschau” is almost boring. There is no question that ARD will get the rights. The ProSiebenSat.1 Group is currently undergoing major job cuts and even 20 years ago – when the reach was still high – the Bundesliga was considered unable to be refinanced the evening before. Sat.1 could switch to “ran” between 6:30 p.m. and 8:15 p.m., but the effect would then evaporate. Family films are currently being broadcast afterwards. Reruns of “Friends” are currently running on ProSieben, but numerous shows are also missing from prime time. Very unattractive clip shows that do not attract an audience of millions have already been shown several times. RTL cannot enter the race, after all, a maximum of 35 broadcasting times would be available if “RTL Aktuell” is not postponed. The magazine “Life!” has to be broadcast on Saturday evening, the station only accepted the decision a few months ago.

Perhaps the National Football League (NFL) could play a crucial role. Although almost all games are on free-to-air television in the United States, there are millions of pay-TV subscribers. The German Football League could probably generate up to 400 million euros more per season if it sold an additional four games per matchday to ProSieben & Co. An interesting candidate would be RTL, for example, which could be interested in a game on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday could boost the previous evening and give a little primetime momentum, Sunday’s game would give the NFL an extreme boost. In addition, the attractiveness of the second league has increased. So far, almost all games – with the exception of the top game – have been awarded to one candidate. Due to its current attractiveness, the second league definitely needs to be split into several packages.

So far, the league has only sold kick-off times anyway. Perhaps we would have to put together team packages on pay-TV television in the future in order to increase the licenses. This would mean that league and pay TV stations would be accepted by fans. The following example: Bayern would play exclusively on DAZN (Package A), Dortmund on Sky (Package B). In the event of a clash, both subscribers could watch the games, but at the same time DAZN and Sky also pay for the match. The DFL and its clubs have already shied away from possible experiments in recent years. Probably this time too, which is why sales will probably fall a second time.