Online retail giant Amazon acquired domestic broadcast rights to the most recent Monday-evening Bundesliga match between Werder Bremen and Bayer Leverkusen in a direct deal with the German Football League (DFL), as the latter continues to negotiate a longer-term solution.
The deal, which meant Amazon Prime subscribers in Germany and Austria could stream the match live, was announced only hours before kick-off.
Subscription streaming service DAZN was also broadcasting the same match, following a similar one-match deal with the DFL.
DAZN has been broadcasting Monday-evening Bundesliga matches throughout the 2019-20 season as part of its sublicensing agreement with international media group Discovery that included rights for 45 matches per season.
Discovery initially acquired the 45-match package from the DFL, in a four-season deal from 2017-18 to 2020-21, but last year agreed to sell on rights to DAZN in a deal covering the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.
Subscribers to Amazon Prime have previously had access to Bundesliga matches, as Discovery had a distribution agreement with the online retailer that gave its customers access to its Eurosport content.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the DFL has been able to renegotiate all of its domestic contracts, including its radio rights deal with Amazon, apart from its agreement with Discovery. The media group is seeking to terminate its media-rights contract with the league, utilising a reported ‘special termination’ clause.
This has meant that DAZN has had to go directly to the DFL to acquire the rights its was due to broadcast through its sublicensing deal, and only a one-match deal was signed off initially.
The DFL is currently in negotiations over a longer-term solution.