EM 2028 in Great Britain and Ireland
ARD and ZDF secure the broadcast rights
Updated on 01/20/2025 – 10:48 amReading time: 1 min.
Good news for all football fans: The 2028 European Championship will be shown on free TV – all 51 games.
The public TV broadcasters ARD and ZDF have secured the broadcast rights for the 2028 European Football Championship in Great Britain and Ireland. Both broadcasters announced this on Monday. With the deal they will receive all 51 games of the Euro 2028.
At the last European Championship in Germany, ARD and ZDF surprisingly lost out to Telekom. For the tournament, ARD and ZDF only had access to some of the broadcasts via sub-licenses. While Telekom showed all games, 17 games per public broadcaster were shown on free-to-air television, supplemented by twelve games on RTL. Telekom kept five games exclusively behind a paywall.
The renewed acquisition of rights now secures games for ARD and ZDF that traditionally attract millions of viewers. The 2024 European Championship had already been a highlight for television viewers: more than 20 broadcasts of the last European Championship each attracted over ten million fans to their TV sets.
The German team’s quarter-final defeat against Spain was particularly a ratings hit, with an average of 27.154 million viewers on ARD. The market share at that time was 80.9 percent.