German sports broadcaster Sport1 has agreed a deal to sublicense rights to the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, the top division of ice hockey in the country, from telco Deutsche Telekom.
The four-season agreement encompasses the DEL’s 2016-17 to 2019-20 campaigns and includes platform-neutral audiovisual free-to-air distribution rights, exclusively in Germany and non-exclusively in Austria and Switzerland.
Sport1 will show at least 40 DEL games per season exclusively on German free-to-air television as well as livestreaming action at Sport1.de. The rights package includes regular-season games and the subsequent pre-playoffs, playoffs and finals.
The DEL Winter Game in 2017 and 2019 will also be shown live on Sport1. As well as the live rights, the deal with Deutsche Telekom also includes extensive clip and highlights rights for the Sport1 platforms.
Henning Stiegenroth, head of sports marketing at Deutsche Telekom, said: “We are delighted to have found in Sport1 a free-TV partner with proven ice hockey expertise, who in the past has demonstrated their skill in top-quality and emotional ice hockey broadcasts, including as a partner of the national team. The partnership with Sport1 is therefore the perfect complement to the live broadcasting of up to 419 DEL games per season on the Telekom platforms.”
Deutsche Telekom in January acquired rights for the DEL from 2016-17 to 2019-20, with the option of extending the deal by a further four seasons, from 2020-21 to 2023-24.
As part of Sport1’s current contract with the Infront Sports & Media agency, the broadcaster was granted the platform-neutral exclusive multimedia rights for Germany to the International Ice Hockey Federation’s World Championships through to 2017, when the tournament will be held in Germany and France.
Also under the present deal with the German Ice Hockey Federation (DEB), the annual Deutschland Cup and home and away games of the German national team will be shown live on Sport1 through to the 2017-18 season.