ORF threat ahead of Austrian Bundesliga tender

Austrian public-service broadcaster ORF has said it will walk away from showing live coverage of the Austrian Bundesliga, the top division of football in the country, unless it can retain its rights for 36 live matches per season in the next three-year cycle, from 2013-14 to 2015-16.

The Nachrichten news website reported that pay-television operator Sky Deutschland would like to have more exclusivity in its Bundesliga coverage in the next cycle, but ORF sports director Hans-Peter Trost said that there was “no way” his company would consider fewer live matches.

He said that ORF was not interested in packages containing less than 36 matches per season. He added that it would be “hard” for the broadcaster to pay the same amount as in the current cycle.

Carsten Schmidt, Sky’s head of sports, advertising sales and the internet, said that securing more exclusivity for pay-television would require the approval of the clubs, but added that such a move would ensure “a better future.”

Schmidt said that Sky, which currently shows 180 matches per season, would wait until the tender for the new cycle is launched before considering its position. However, he added that the broadcaster had been lobbying for several years for the Austrian Bundesliga tender to be adapted to allow for the possibility of live games only being available on pay-television, but had made “little progress.”

Schmidt said that pay-television in Austria lags behind the rest of Europe with penetration of less than 10 per cent and added: “We are not so presumptuous as to believe that our belief can be adopted overnight in the hearts of minds of those responsible.”

ORF and Sky currently pay €17 million ($20.91 million) per year in a three-year deal, from 2010-11 to 2012-13.