The deal, subject to board approval, was agreed yesterday between Thomas Gruber, chairman of ARD, Markus Schaechter, director general of ZDF, and FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
Gruber said the deal was made possible by the agreement to cover 46 of the 64 matches that will be played in total.
Schaechter said: “By sharing the rights with the commercial broadcasters, as we do during the FIFA World Cup 2006, we managed to save a substantial amount of money. This enables us to finance the rights through the sports rights budgets.”
Rights to delayed highlights for all 64 matches have been granted to public broadcasters.
The 46 live matches include all the matches involving the German national team, the opening match, three of the four quarter-finals, both semi-finals, the third-place play-off and the final.
FIFA has retained the right to license the pay-TV rights to all 64 matches. The same applies to the license for the free-TV rights for the 18 games not being broadcast live by ARD/ZDF.
The deal was reached under the management of SportA’s managing director, Dagmar Brandenstein. SportA is the sports rights subsidiary of ARD and ZDF.
The size of the deal was not disclosed.
