It’s that time again. After an eventful summer of football with the European Championship, Copa America and the Olympic Games in Tokyo, the 59th Bundesliga season starts on Friday evening. To kick off, defending champion Bayern Munich will face Borussia Mönchengladbach.
After weeks of waiting, the Bundesliga is starting a new season and, as is so often the case, there are some important changes to the broadcasting rights this year. The times when only a Sky subscription was enough to make the football heart beat faster are over. In addition to the pay TV provider, streaming services such as DAZN and Amazon are now also involved, and even classic TV channels such as Sat.1, ARD and ZDF broadcast some games. In this overview you can see who is broadcasting which games and when.
Sat.1 and DAZN show the opening game between Bavaria and Gladbach
The Bundesliga season traditionally begins on the first day of the match with a duel between the defending champion and a well-known challenger. Unlike usual, FC Bayern will not be playing as hosts this year, but will have to go to Gladbach for the difficult away game at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, August 13th.
The game will be broadcast on the private television broadcaster Sat.1, which is celebrating its comeback on the national football stage in the new season. At the same time, the game is also running on ran.de and sat1.de as well as in the stream on the in-house provider Joyn. In addition, Sat.1 will broadcast the Supercup between champions and cup winners as well as one game on the 17th and 18th matchdays. In addition, all relegation games are broadcast on Sat.1 on free TV.
The streaming provider DAZN will also broadcast the opening game and all 105 other Bundesliga games on Friday and Sunday. This year, the niche product for fans of international football has become a big player on a national level for the first time. Only Sky broadcasts more games of the top German league live. From summer 2021 DAZN customers will pay 14.99 euros per month or 149.99 euros per year. In addition to the Bundesliga, you will also receive all games from the top European leagues from Spain, France and Italy as well as various other international sporting events.
Sky loses a large part of its Bundesliga rights
The clear loser in this year’s rights allocation is Sky. Not long ago, the pay broadcaster had exclusive rights to live football. From the new season onwards, they will only broadcast the 200 Saturday games, all games during the week and relegation to the first division. However, at the start of the season, Sky presented a welcome innovation. In addition to the traditional Saturday conference, individual games can be individually combined to form a separate conference from September onwards. However, the feature is reserved exclusively for Sky Q customers.
The Bundesliga package from Sky currently costs 30 euros per month and 25 euros per month with an annual subscription. In return, football fans also receive all the matches in the 2nd Bundesliga, which this year has traditional clubs. If you want to book the DFB Cup, Premier League and Formula 1, you can do so for 22.50 euros per month.
Highlights: The sports show and sports studio will be retained
Even if the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF will no longer be able to watch live football, a lot will remain the same in the new season. On Saturday evening at 6:30 p.m., ARD will broadcast the summaries of all games from the afternoon and Friday in the sports show. From the Sunday games, detailed highlights can be seen in the daily news and daily topics as well as in the third programs.
On the late Saturday evening, ZDF is concentrating on the traditional program “The Current Sport Studio” with detailed reports on the top game in the evening, as well as other highlights from Saturday and a studio guest. On Sunday morning, Sport1 will broadcast the highlights of all previous games before and after the one-two. If you don’t want to wait that long, you will receive short highlight clips of the individual games directly after the final whistle at Bild and DAZN.
Live broadcasts at a glance:
- Sky: All games on Saturday and in English weeks as a single game and in the conference; plus DFL Supercup and Bundesliga relegation
- DAZN: All games on Friday and Sunday
- Sat.1: One game each on the 1st, 17th and 18th matchday; plus DFL Supercup
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
