German pay-television broadcaster Sky Deutschland will again make its ‘Konferenz’ coverage of Bundesliga and second-tier 2. Bundesliga matches available on a free-to-view basis for two match-weeks when the leagues resume.
The German Football League (DFL) was given the green light to resume by the government last week, with matches scheduled from May 16.
Sky’s Konferenz programme – the broadcasting of live action from various simultaneous matches in a single broadcast – will be available on the free-to-view Sky Sport News channel and free via a live stream on the Sky Sport website.
The broadcaster announced a similar initiative in March, when league matches were played behind closed doors before eventually being postponed. Last month, Jan Lehmann, commercial director at Bundesliga club Mainz, revealed that Sky is considering plans to show games at a reduced price.
The Sky Sport News channel is available to Sky television customers, plus television customers of Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, NetCologne and Unitymedia.
Whilst Sky prepares for the return of the Bundesliga, rival DAZN is still waiting to see whether it can broadcast live matches from the league this weekend.
The international streaming service currently sublicenses live rights to 45 Bundesliga matches per season from international media group Discovery, which initially acquired them directly from the DFL. This includes matches on Friday night, Sunday, Monday and relegation play-off matches.
DAZN is thought to be paying Discovery significantly less than the media group pays the DFL.
Discovery was the only domestic broadcaster not to renegotiate its contract with the DFL over the final instalment of this seasons rights fee, and is currently seeking to terminate the contract with the DFL, utilising a reported ‘special termination’ clause.
DAZN was one of the domestic rights-holders that did renegotiate with the DFL. It has a direct deal for Bundesliga clips highlights.
Christian Seifert, chief executive of the DFL has said: “We also have no problems with DAZN. We currently a different view on the interpretation of the contracts than Eurosport/Discovery. We are in talks over that. But we assume that these talks can be resolved. We will continue to offer Friday matches, we honestly owe that to the fans and our partner DAZN.”
It is thought that DAZN is hoping to be able to broadcast the match between Werder Bremen and Bayer Leverkusen on Monday 18. Negotiations are thought to be ongoing between the DFL, Discovery and DAZN as to how this could be possible.