MUMBAI: A development about which SportzPower had been alerted to back in July can now be confirmed. The severely downsized offer made by Star Sports, broadcast rights holder for the Bundesliga in India since 2014, to continue televising Germany’s top tier league in the new cycle, has been rejected by DFL Sports Enterprises, international media rights distributor for German football.
Ergo, Star Sports has dropped the baton on the Bundesliga after a five-year run that had seen India’s lead sportscaster paying out $1.5 million a year for a deal that covered all the territories of the Indian Sub-Continent i.e India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Maldives.
So what was the offer tabled by Star? While industry sources have told SportzPower it was under $500,000, another figure put out by the media was that Star’s offer was for $600,000 per year.
Be that as it may, the pressing question is what are the options before DFL now? “Default option” Sony Pictures Networks appears to rule itself out seeing as it earlier chose to let go the LaLiga rights and seems focused on its ongoing and fruitful relationship with UEFA for the Euros, Champions League and Europa League.
SportzPower’s educated guess would be that it COULD (emphasis ours) be a toss up between multi-sport aggregator platform FanCode and social media giant Facebook. This website can confirm that Fancode has made a bid. And not just for streaming rights, but for television as well as digital. And what of Facebook? Highly unlikely is what SportzPower is given to understand.
