German Bundesliga football club Bayern Munich has said it would be willing to share revenues gained from public-service broadcaster ARD’s broadcasts of its games in the domestic DFB-Pokal cup competition with smaller German teams.
The German Football Association’s (DFB) broadcast agreement for the DFB-Pokal, which runs through the 2015-16 season, allows ARD to televise eight matches per season live, with pay-television broadcaster Sky Deutschland providing the remaining 55 games.
Due to Bayern’s popularity, ARD often chooses its games for live broadcast. Bayern chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told the Sport Bild magazine that the Bundesliga champion had agreed in principle for its revenues from ARD-broadcast games to be “thrown in a large pot” for the benefit of other teams.
Rummenigge said the proposal has come from the German Football League’s (DFL) DFB-Pokal working group, adding Bayern is willing to support “the smaller and medium-sized clubs to a certain extent in solidarity.”
ARD has selected Bayern’s semi-final game against Kaiserslautern on April 16 for live broadcast, with the Bavarian club expected to receive a rights fee of €600,000 ($828,000).
The competition is under the jurisdiction of the DFB, which is yet to sign off on the DFL proposal.