German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom is still talking to Sky Deutschland over carrying the pay-television broadcaster’s coverage of the Bundesliga, the top two divisions of football in the country, on its IPTV platform, Entertain.
Sky Deutschland chief executive Brian Sullivan said that the broadcaster would be open to a possible collaboration, according to the Rapid TV News website.
Deutsche Telekom marketing director Christian Illek said that for the remaining year of its current five-year rights deal, from 2008-09 to 2012-13, Telekom would continue to exploit its IPTV rights through its Bundesliga service Liga Total!, which is available as a subscription option on the Entertain platform.
He played down concerns about the long-term impact of the loss of Bundesliga IPTV rights on Entertain by saying that only one in 10 of the platform’s 1.8 million customers were subscribers to the Liga Total! service.
Sky retained pay-television rights for the Bundesliga and dislodged Telekom as the IPTV rights-holder in a four-year deal, from 2013-14 to 2016-17, agreed in April.