Pay-television broadcaster Sky Deutschland has today (Monday) provided live coverage of Australian club football competition the A-League as part of a tie-up with Germany-based subscription broadcaster Sportdigital Fussball.
Sky announced on Saturday that it will show matches in an ‘open window’ on the Sky Sport 2 HD channel. However, it has been widely reported that Football Federation Australia will tomorrow announce a shut down of the league.
In addition to the A-League’s regular exposure on Sportdigital Fussball, Sky today offered live coverage of Newcastle Jets’ 2-1 win over Melbourne City.
Sky Sport 2 HD was also due to offer today’s match between Perth Glory and Western United only for that fixture to be postponed.
Sportdigital Fussball is part of the ‘trendSports’ package offered by Sky. The package is priced at €5.99 ($6.37) per month and also includes the Sport1+ and eSports1 channels, plus action sports and lifestyle channel Edgesport. In November, Sportdigital launched Edgesport in Germany, Austria and Switzerland after securing carriage deals with Sky and OTT platform Waipu.tv.
The channel, which is being operated in German-speaking territories by Sportdigital through a sublicensing agreement with the IMG agency, is being distributed as a pay-television service via satellite, cable networks, IPTV and via internet platforms.
The FFA has scheduled a media conference for Tuesday to make a “significant announcement”. The national governing body is expected to follow the lead of the National Rugby League and Australian Football League in suspending its season amid the Covid-19 outbreak.
Sportdigital first acquired rights to the A-League in a three-year deal running from 2014-15 to 2016-17. International broadcast rights to the league are sold by IMG in a deal running from 2019-20 to 2022-23.