Pan-regional sports broadcaster Eurosport has enhanced its women’s football content by acquiring the international television rights to the German Women’s Bundesliga in a deal spanning the 2013-14 to 2015-16 seasons.
The agreement includes the rights to broadcast live matches on each of the 22 match days across each of the three seasons. Eurosport can schedule at least one match per round in an early Saturday afternoon slot in Germany and internationally.
The deal with the German Football Association (DFB) gives Eurosport international options to broadcast the Women’s Bundesliga across its 54 markets in Europe and 17 markets in Asia-Pacific.
The acquisition of Women’s Bundesliga rights adds domestic league content to Eurosport’s women’s football coverage, with the broadcaster having previously covered the Fifa Women’s World Cup, Uefa Women’s Euro, Women’s Uefa Champions League, Algarve Cup and age-group international competitions such as the U17 and U20 Fifa World Cups.
Eurosport Group chief executive, Jean-Thierry Augustin, said: “No other channel can match Eurosport’s commitment to women’s football. The sport is going from strength to strength and proving incredibly popular across Europe as seen with our great ratings for the recent 2013 Uefa Women’s Euro which attracted nearly 55m Europeans and grew in average audience by over 50 per cent on the previous edition.”
The Women’s Bundesliga was established into a single national league in 1997 and currently features 12 professional teams.