DFL Sports Enterprises, the marketing subsidiary of the German Football League (DFL), has agreed rights deals for the top-tier Bundesliga in a further 18 European countries for the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons.
In the tender process, media rights have been awarded in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malta, Moldova, Russia, Spain (including Andorra), Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Belarus and Cyprus. The rights have been assigned on a platform-neutral basis and for the applicable national language.
DFL Sports Enterprises said it has achieved particularly high revenue growth rates in the markets of Spain, Turkey and Greece. In Spain, the collaboration with pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus is to be continued.
Pan-regional broadcaster Eurosport, a company with a proven Bundesliga track record in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, has been appointed as a new partner in Turkey. DFL Sports Enterprises said it has also reached a direct agreement with an unnamed broadcaster in Greece.
The rights in Russia, Ukraine and 10 other CIS states such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan were awarded to the Sportsman agency. DFL Sports Enterprises said Sportsman plans to make Bundesliga football available in Russia both via conventional television broadcasting and digital streaming platforms. In Malta, the rights were retained by current partner, pay-television broadcaster Melita, while CyTAvision, the IPTV service of the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (CyTA), has retained Bundesliga rights in Cyprus.
As a result of the deals, DFL Sports Enterprises said the Bundesliga is set to more than double its overseas rights income in comparison to the current rights period. “These signings prove once more that we have been able to successfully continue our strategy of placing Bundesliga football on major international media networks, thus combining quantitative with qualitative growth,” Jörg Daubitzer, managing director of DFL Sports Enterprises, added.
“These new European agreements will contribute to our more than doubling the international sales for the upcoming rights period, and will help us to exceed the €150m ($187.5m) per season mark already in the 2015-2016 season.”
This forecast exceeds previous estimations, which had foreseen an increase from €70m to €140m per season.
In contrast to previous practice, the media rights were only awarded for two seasons in this tender. This synchronises the European license term with the German licensing period, which expires at the end of the 2016-17 season.
For information on each of the deals, including rights fees, read this week’s issue of TV Sports Markets – published tomorrow (Friday).