German public-service broadcaster ARD will consider showing boxing bouts beyond the end of this year on an ad hoc basis and is considering bringing back coverage of the Tour de France cycling race, according to spokeswoman Anna Engelke.
ARD announced in April that it would not renew its rights deal with the Sauerland boxing agency beyond the end of 2014.
However, Engelke said that “broadcasts of individual fights are still possible.”
Kalle Sauerland, the head of the boxing agency, told the Berliner Morgen Post newspaper: “Boxing will retain a place on ARD. In this respect, we have been quite optimistic since the beginning."
Engelke added that ARD was exploring the possibility of a “partial re-entry into live coverage of the 2015 Tour de France” with a decision likely by the end of this year.
ARD stopped showing the race in 2012 due to doping scandals in the sport, but the broadcaster’s sports director, Axel Balkausky, said in July that the impressive performances of German cyclists Marcel Kittel, Tony Martin and André Greipel at the 2014 tour, plus efforts to clean up cycling’s doping problems, had been “very positive”.