German pay-television broadcaster Sky Deutschland has acquired rights to two warm-up games of the German men’s handball team ahead of the 2017 World Championship and will provide them free-to-air via the Sky Sport News HD channel.
The matches against Romania and Austria, on January 3 and January 9, respectively, are Germany’s final warm-up games before its World Championship campaign commences in France against Hungary on January 13.
Sky is broadcasting the games via Sky Sport News HD with the channel having switched to free-to-air on December 1. The agreement comes with Germany still without a broadcast deal for the World Championship, which runs from January 11-29.
German handball stakeholders are seeking to avoid a repeat of the situation that arose during the most recent edition of the International Handball Federation showpiece. The 2015 Men’s World Championship took place in Qatar, with public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF only securing rights for extracts of coverage from the tournament.
Under the deal with beIN Media Group, the tournament’s global rights distribution partner, clips of games were shown in news and sports programmes. ARD and ZDF pulled out of talks to acquire live rights for the tournament before Sky struck a deal for live coverage before the start of the event.