The German Football League (DFL) has announced the date for the resumption of the auction to allocate national media rights. As the umbrella organization of the first and second Bundesliga announced on Friday, the process will continue from November 25. Originally, the rights for the four seasons from the 2025/2026 season were supposed to have been awarded five months ago. But the dispute between the streaming service DAZN and the DFL put an end to the proceedings.
The dispute concerned an upgraded and highly attractive B package with 196 live matches compared to the current rights period: above all the first league matches on Saturday afternoon and the Friday matches. The latter are currently part of the package with Sunday games on DAZN, while Sky shows all of Saturday, with the “top game” of the afternoon and the conference.
DAZN against the DFL
The streaming service is said to have offered around 400 million euros per season, far more than competitor Sky was said to be willing to pay (around 320 million euros) and so, from a purely financial point of view, that enough to win the contract accordingly. with the auction rules approved by the Federal Cartel Office. However, the DFL demanded a bank guarantee as security, which DAZN was unable to provide within the required period.
This was followed by a partly public dispute over late payments in the current rights period and DAZN went to arbitration. At the end of September, he ruled that Package B had to be put out to tender again. According to the DFL, there is no change in the details of the offer and the structure of the right packages with games in the first and second series as well as the Supercup and relegation. However, the regulations regarding securities and deadlines may be adjusted as a result of the dispute. Among other things, the “no single buyer rule” is no longer relevant for the upcoming rights period, so in theory all living rights could revert to a single bidder.
The seven live packages are the most financially significant part of the auction. They represent about 80 percent of the total income and are awarded first. Then there are highlight packages like the one showing the sports show or a pay package that includes the rights to recaps right after the final whistle. In total, the DFL earns an average of 1.1 billion euros per season with the current contracts, which were concluded under special circumstances at the beginning of the corona pandemic. By the 2020/2021 season, there was a bit more: 1.16 billion euros on average. An average of 214 million euros per season currently comes from the international marketing of media rights.
Distributions from the marketing of national rights are therefore a key element for clubs that require planning security. It is nothing that the DFL mentions in the announcement that the announced schedule takes into account “the importance of the offer for the economic planning of the clubs and the DFL Group” and that it also gives sufficient initiation time to interested parties.