Bundesliga teams up with Perform to find Italian audience

DFL Sports Enterprises, the commercial arm of the German football league, the Bundesliga, has agreed a deal with digital sports specialists Perform for live and highlights coverage of the 2012-13 season on digital platforms in Italy.

The agreement comes after the DFL failed to agree a deal with a mainstream Italian broadcaster.

Pay-television operator Sky Italia, which held the live rights for the last three seasons, did not renew its deal and rival pay-television operator Mediaset Premium decided against taking up the rights for scheduling reasons.

Perform will make available rights for free-to-view streams of one live match per week to newspaper websites and sports portals, including Perform’s football website Goal.com, which reaches 1.6 million fans in Italy per month.

The DFL will also distribute highlight clips via a Bundesliga channel on Perform’s video-on-demand platform ePlayer, which reaches eight million fans in Italy through publisher websites and portals. Clips will also be available on LG and Toshiba connected TVs via Perform’s Livesport.tv application.

Perform will sell the advertising and sponsorship inventory across all of the live and on-demand content in Italy.

Kay Dammholz, vice president sales audiovisual rights at DFL Sports Enterprises, said: “In cooperation with Perform and their Italian media partners we are confident to deliver a top football offering to the numerous Bundesliga fans in Italy. Furthermore, we expect to draw major learnings from this pilot project for possible further future activities in the digital field.”

Jacopo Tonoli, managing director of Perform in southern Europe, added: “This is the first time a major football competition like the Bundesliga has adopted such an exciting distribution strategy. It is one of the world’s leading club football competitions and we are excited to be able to use our market-leading products and partners to ensure fans of the Bundesliga can stay in touch with all the news and action.”