Short scenario for football fans
Is less football on free TV soon?
27.02.2025 – 10:01 a.m.Reading time: 2 min.
Arminia Bielefeld’s DFB Cup miracle against Werder Bremen on Tuesday were able to admire millions of football fans on ZDF. But broadcasts like this could soon become even less common.
Foot TV is now a rarity. The Champions League has completely disappeared behind the payment barrier in Germany, the Bundesliga, with a few exceptions. In higher club football, the DFB Cup is the only competition where football is still regularly shown on television free of charge. But that could come to an end soon.
From the 2026/27 season there could be even fewer DFB cup games on free TV. The reason for this is the new tender for media rights that Holger Blask, Managing Director of DFB GmbH, with his team.
There are currently 15 games of the competition at ARD and ZDF per season – this will remain the case in the coming season. However, there are several variants in the new tender: While an option continues to provide 15 games on freely receptual television, another could lead to a reduction to only nine free TV games. In this case, all other encounters would run exclusively for a payer.
The allocation of media rights is already underway, the procedural regulations have been sent. The auctions should take place in early May. For the first time, in addition to the TV rights for the men’s competition, the women’s cup for the women’s cup are also awarded in a separate procedure.
However, there is only one variant for the women’s competition: five games are guaranteed to be seen on free TV. There was no connection between the packages for men and women, explained DFB director Blask.
Since the 2022/23 season, ARD and ZDF have shown 15 cup games and extensive summaries per season. All 63 matches can also be seen on the Pay TV station Sky.