The ghost season of the Bundesliga has led to increasing numbers on the most important football broadcasters.
ARD and Sky posted improved ratings in the last season of the four-year TV rights cycle.
The TV contracts, which are now expiring, also offered some flops - and at the same time mark changes for the fans for the new season.
Audience ratings increased in the Corona season, which only allowed a few isolated viewers in the stadiums at the end of the ARD sports show.
The TV classic with the summaries of the first division saw an average of 4.789 million people.
In the previous season, the value was 4.56 million.
At the beginning of the corona pandemic, there was initially a lot of guesswork about a collapse in the numbers.
"The number of viewers at the Sportschau has developed very well," commented ARD sports coordinator Axel Balkausky.
"This is a great success for us and a wonderful confirmation of our regular reporting on the Bundesliga matchdays in the first." More than 1.6 million also saw the summaries of the Sunday games in the sports programs of the third programs - the trend here was downward.
Top value at Dortmund against Bayern
The live game with the most viewers was the match between Bayern Munich and Schalke 04, with the record champions winning 8-0 on September 18.
An average of 6.66 million saw the duel on ZDF and ensured a market share of 23.7 percent.
The top score on Sky was the game Borussia Dortmund against Bayern Munich with 2.57 million. The pay-TV broadcaster posted several records (2.8 million viewers watched the games on the last day of the match last Saturday, and the numbers rose to an average of two million on Saturday afternoon, and 1.3 million saw the top game in the evening) and determined Compared to the previous season, an average increase in viewers of six percent per game day. “Our Bundesliga broadcasts again met with great interest and, especially on Saturdays, more viewers tuned in than ever before,” commented sports director Charly Classen.
With this season ends the rights period, which was characterized by a record contract and a special kind of flop.
Part of the revenue of 4.64 billion euros in four seasons was the contract with Discovery / Eurosport for 40 premier league games per season, which even led to legal disputes.
First, Eurosport stopped the unsuccessful Bundesliga engagement after two years, sold the rights to the streaming service DAZN under a sublicense and tried to terminate the DFL with an extraordinary termination at the beginning of the Corona crisis.
It took several months before DFL boss Christian Seifert was able to announce: "We have won the legal dispute comprehensively and the money is flowing as planned." In the intervening chaos, Amazon even briefly became the Bundesliga broadcaster.
Now the new rights cycle begins with a 4.4 billion contract, without Eurosport and with even more games at DAZN.
200 point games will run on Saturdays on Sky and 106 on Friday and Sunday on the streaming service.
So fans finally need two subscriptions.
DAZN will now increase its price.
The Germany boss Thomas de Buhr confirmed the Sport Bild.
The monthly price increases from 11.99 to 14.99 euros, the annual subscription costs 149.99 instead of 119.99 euros.
"The DNA of DAZN is to always be able to offer every fan a fair deal," said de Buhr.
The streaming service last increased prices in August 2019.
The monthly fee rose from 9.99 euros to 11.99 euros.
At no additional cost, fans will be able to see the summaries in the future in the ARD sports show and in the ZDF's current sports studio, which has an average of around two million viewers.
However, the second will no longer offer live games in the future, which averaged 6.12 million viewers.
Sat.1 prevailed at the DFL auction.
The free TV broadcaster is allowed to show nine games on free TV per season.
The encounters include the Supercup and first division games on the 1st, 17th and 18th matchdays.
There are also four relegation games and the opening game of the second Bundesliga.
What is new is that, in the future, games in the second division can be seen again at no additional cost. Sport1 will broadcast 33 games on Saturday evening with prominent clubs such as Werder, HSV and Schalke. "We at Sport1 can look forward to it", wrote editor-in-chief Pit Gottschalk: "The name means that these will be blasting duels."