Live matches from women’s football’s Frauen Bundesliga will be shown domestically by Eurosport after a long-term rights agreement was announced today by the Discovery-owned broadcaster.
Eurosport will show Friday-evening games from 2019-20 to 2021-22 under the terms of the deal with the DFB, the German football federation.
The addition of the women’s Bundesliga rights partly offsets the loss of rights to Friday-evening games from the men’s Bundesliga, after Eurosport sublicensed rights to 45 games per season to over-the-top subscription platform DAZN until 2021.
Games from the women’s top flight will be shown at the regular slot of 7:15pm on Friday and made available to a free-to-air audience on Eurosport 1.
Eurosport takes over from Sport1 as the free-to-air broadcaster of the league, while telecoms operator Deutsche Telekom retains extensive live coverage of the competition. Eurosport’s offering begins on Friday as 1. FFC Frankfurt take on Turbine Potsdam in the season opener.
Upon acquiring the rights to the men’s Bundesliga from 2017-18 onwards, Eurosport showed the games on its pay-TV channel and via its subscription OTT player.
Werner Starz, director of product development for Eurosport in Germany, said: “Our aim is to establish the top game and with it the women’s Bundesliga on free-to-air television on a Friday evening. The [2019] women’s World Cup this summer showed once again that Germans have a big interest in women’s football. We want to create a fixed appointment for the fans with this regular coverage.”
Eurosport previously showed the women’s Bundesliga from 2013-14 to 2015-16, before Sport1 took over the rights ahead of the 2016-17 season.
Earlier this year, the DFB announced a tie-up with the online streaming platform soccerwatch.tv for the broadcasting of games from the second-tier 2. Frauen Bundesliga until the end of the 2020-21 campaign.