The head of the OTT company DAZN, Thomas de Buhr, said that the company will raise its offer for the next Bundesliga rights cycle. He declared: “You can see that we are serious, you can see that we can do it. We will take a close look at the rights packages as soon as they are officially advertised and then decide what we will do.”
After a deal with Eurosport, DAZN offers live Bundesliga and has the rights of 45 Bundesliga matches in the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons. Eurosport reportedly pays €340 million for rights to 45 of Sky Deutschland’s Bundesliga games per season, including every Friday evening fixture and five matches on Sundays and an additional five on Mondays. DAZN also sub-licenses a catalogue of matches from Sky’s UEFA Champions League rights in Germany, while it holds exclusive Europa League coverage in the country.
DAZN is challenging SKY’s monopoly on sports right. Sky is the exclusive rightsholder to Premier League in England, de Buhr says that the company’s inroads with the Champions League and Bundesliga “shows it means business”. “We really liked the Premier League,” de Buhr explained. “On the other hand, we already had the Champions League and the Europa League in big sizes, and we now have the Bundesliga in. All in all, we offer all football fans an extremely strong package of rights, which clearly demonstrates the loss of the Premier League overcompensate.”
