Sky Deutschland Retains Bundesliga Rights At Auction
04/17/2012| 07:45am US/Eastern
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By Harriet Torry
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Sky Deutschland AG (>> Sky Deutschland AG) retained key broadcasting rights Tuesday for top matches of Germany's Bundesliga soccer league, fending off competition from telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG (>> Deutsche Telekom AG)--which walked away from the league association's auction empty-handed.
German league association Deutsche Fussball Liga GmbH, or DFL, secured overall revenue of EUR628 million a season for 2013/14 through to 2016/17 for national Bundesliga broadcasting rights at the auction, up significantly from the EUR412 million a season from the last auction.
It isn't yet clear how much of that sum Sky will pay, as four other German stations received rights for certain highlight and other broadcasts.
Deutsche Telekom had bid for the satellite and cable rights under a plan to launch a so-called wholesale offer that would have also allowed it to license Bundesliga games to other companies, but that proved unsuccessful. Deutsche Telekom also lost the rights for Internet transmission known as IPTV, to Sky Deutschland.
Publisher Axel Springer AG (>> Axel Springer AG) clinched rights for web TV and mobile clips.
The Bundesliga is the second-largest league in Europe by revenue after the U.K.'s Premier League, according to DFL, with an average 18 million viewers each weekend last season.
News Corp. (NWS), which owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of this newswire and The Wall Street Journal, has a 49.9% stake in Sky Deutschland.
- By Harriet Torry and Philipp Grontzki, Dow Jones Newswires: +49 69 29725 511: harriet.torry@dowjones.com
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