Women’s football is booming. The German Football Association can now be celebrated for awarding the media rights for the Bundesliga. In the future, license income will be 16 times more than before. The new TV presence also brings a new game date. And he doesn’t like it.
Women’s football in Germany wants to be celebrated. Financially and in terms of media, the Bundesliga is making a quantum leap. After the hype surrounding the European Championship, the media rights are now being assigned independently for the first time. And because the proceeds in the competition have been dramatically low so far, the German Football Association (DFB) can claim the crazy multiplication of 1600 percent. However, the proceeds are less than it may sound now: there will be 5.175 million euros per season in license income in the future.
“We are entering new economic dimensions. This is exactly the result that we were hoping for,” said the responsible managing director Holger Blask at the presentation. “This goes hand in hand with the responsibility to take further steps towards professionalism.”
So far, the investment has not nearly covered costs, and each of the twelve Bundesliga clubs has made losses. The total revenue did not even cover the clubs’ staff costs. So far, the DFB had promised the clubs about 300,000 euros from central marketing, about half from media revenues. According to Blask, the new package puts the Bundesliga in second place internationally behind England in terms of revenue. In the Women’s Super League around ten million pounds (about 11.4 million euros) are taken. According to the DFB, how the proceeds will be distributed should “still be discussed”.
In the future, the league games will be shown both on the previous provider MagentaSport and on DAZN. The two portals will then offer all 132 games from the 2023/24 to 2026/27 seasons, and ARD and ZDF are also allowed to broadcast ten live games per season, summaries will also be available on Sky.
The games will all have their own kick-off times, and there will still be no conference. There will also be a new Monday game, the rights to which have been secured by Sport1. “We could hardly achieve more visibility. Every single game runs on the major platforms. We hope for a significant increase in reach.”
But above all, the Monday game causes resentment. While it was gradually abolished for men – mainly because of protests from the fans – and the third division will no longer play on Mondays in the future, the women will have this date added. “Monday night is a huge opportunity because no other league plays there,” said Blask. But in the women’s Bundesliga, it’s not just the fans who could have a problem with the date. The players themselves also have to see how they can change clothes and warm up on the courts of this republic at 7.30 p.m. Frankfurt striker Laura Freigang recently pointed out on the ZDF “Sportstudio” that many Bundesliga players have to work in order to have enough money to live on, and accordingly have to take vacation on the Mondays that affect them.
Her national team colleague Lina Magull from FC Bayern had said: “It shouldn’t be a regular thing. The weekend is there for football.” Most fans would agree, because who has time to travel across the country to the game on Monday? But there are also those who see Monday’s games as an opportunity to focus attention entirely on women’s football. For example Gerald Jungmann, first board member of SC Sand, one of the clubs where the players cannot live from sport alone. He sees a great opportunity in the Monday games, he told Deutschlandfunk. He believes that many fans would take the time to go to the stadium for a good game.
According to reports, Sport1 should have a say in the scheduling of Monday’s game. This is probably intended to make this the top game, but that introduces new problems. The top clubs in the league, this season like the champions and cup winners of VfL Wolfsburg and FC Bayern, play in the Champions League. As with the men, this is played during the week, match days are Wednesdays and Thursdays. If the league planners follow the rules of the men, the international teams should not be on the pitch on Mondays if they are challenged again on the following Wednesday. Even a game three days later is challenging because of the double burden and the travel strain. If both the wolves and the Munich women were regularly eliminated as candidates for the supposed top game, this would lose its appeal.
In addition to the rights for the Bundesliga, those for the international matches of the runners-up European champions have also been reassigned, they will remain with ARD and ZDF until 2027. What is new, however, is a clause that guarantees the team at least two games per year in the evening in prime time. The players themselves had asked for this in order to get more attention. Last Friday, the friendly game against France took place in prime time in Dresden. In addition to 26,835 fans in the stadium, 3.23 million viewers watched the rerun of the EM semifinals on ARD.
