German media group ProSiebenSat.1 has renewed its free-to-air NFL rights in Germany and Austria, signing a new multi-year contract beginning in the 2020 season.
The rights will be showcased on the ProSieben and ProSieben Maxx channels in Germany and the Puls 4 channel, which is owned by the media group, in Austria.
Although not announced, it is expected that the deal will also cover rights in Switzerland.
ProSiebenSat.1’s current three-year deal for free-to-air NFL rights in Germany, Austria and Switzerland was due to expire after the Super Bowl in February 2020. This deal extended the media group’s rights by two years, having initially agreed a three-year deal from 2015 to 2017.
The NFL also has a pay-television broadcaster in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with streaming service DAZN running over the same three-year period after it also renegotiated its deal in the same year.
ProSiebenSat.1 has covered the NFL since first picking up the rights to the Super Bowl in 2012, ousting then incumbent ARD. At the time, the public broadcaster said that it had reached its “bidding limit”.
Following a two-year agreement with IMG for live rights to the 2014 and 2015 Super Bowls on its flagship Sat.1 network, ProSiebenSat.1 markedly increased its NFL programming output. A three-year deal announced in July 2015 included live coverage of 50 games per season and followed the end of Sport1’s coverage of up to seven games per week on Sport1 US, its erstwhile pay-TV channel focused on North American sports.