The German football league, the Deutsche Fussball Liga, can finally send broadcasters its long-awaited invitation to tender for the media rights to the Bundesliga for the next rights cycle, following the formal approval of the country’s competition regulator, the Bundeskartellamt, of its rights-sales procedure.
The authority yesterday approved the collective selling arrangements of the league for the four seasons from 2013-14. The approval was a formality, as the authority had accepted the league’s proposals in principle last year. The European Commission was consulted throughout the process and raised no objections to the league’s proposals.
The key proposal in the new arrangements regards the free-to-highlights rights. The league will offer two alternative scenarios to the market, to see which produces the best overall result. The first offers free-to-air highlights at around 6pm for traditional Saturday television coverage, as appears in the long-running Sportschau programme on public-service broadcaster ARD. The second scenario offers early-evening highlights on the internet only, with traditional television highlights coverage delayed until 9.45pm.
The league has long suspected that pay-television broadcasters such as Sky Deutschland would be prepared to pay a much higher fee for pay-television rights if the free-to-air highlights were at a later time. However, the clubs have to strike a careful balance. Adequate free-to-air coverage is essential to their sponsorship agreements, which on average are the highest in European football.