Over-the-top sports streaming service DAZN has acquired the partial rights to show four seasons of the Bundesliga beginning with the 2021-22 campaign, German outlet Stern first reported.
Paid television broadcaster Sky reportedly has acquired the rights to 200 live matches per season, including on Saturdays and midweek on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. DAZN will air 106 live matches per season – including all matches on Fridays and Sundays. The deal is worth €4.4 billion, multiple outlets have reported.
Under the current rights agreement, which began in 2017 and runs through the end of the 2020-21 season, Sky exclusively shows 266 live Bundesliga matches per season. DAZN, however, already had a deal with the German Soccer League – through a sublicensing agreement with Eurosport – to air 10 live matches throughout the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season.
DAZN, a British service, launched in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Japan in 2016, in Canada in 2017, in the U.S. and Italy in 2018, and in Spain and Brazil in 2019. The platform shows a number of American professional sports (including MLW) internationally, as well as Major League Baseball highlight shows, Bellator MMA and some boxing in the U.S. – it recently inked a deal to stream Major League Wrestling.
In November 2019, DAZN reportedly hit 8 million users, with 90 percent of those coming from outside the U.S. The service’s numbers are more than double those of ESPN+, which reached 3.5 million paid subscribers at the end its fourth quarter last year.