Austrian commercial broadcaster Servus TV has scrapped a deal to show live coverage of the top-tier German Bundesliga football competition on its free-to-air channel due to a dispute over the choice of matches to be shown.
In February, the broadcaster, which is owned by the Red Bull Media House division of Red Bull, struck a sublicensing deal with pay-television broadcaster Sky Deutschland to show live coverage of six matches from the second half of the 2017-18 Bundesliga season. Sky holds rights to the league in both Germany and Austria.
For the match transmissions, Servus TV took over the Sky signal on its Austrian channel, with the agreement also covering live-streaming rights for Servus TV, with geo-blocking in place to restrict this to Austrian consumers.
“Servus TV has withdrawn from the cooperation with Sky and thus no longer shows German Bundesliga matches on free-TV. This is due to strong differences in the choice of games,” a Servus TV spokeswoman told German magazine DWDL.
A Sky spokesperson confirmed that the two parties had not been able to reach an agreement on the choice of fixtures.
Only the first two matches of the deal were actually shown – Bayern Munich v Schalke and RB Leipzig v Borussia Dortmund. Leipzig v Bayern, which was scheduled to be shown last Sunday, was not broadcast.