Bayern Munich upset with new TV deal, wants own contract

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As the German public anxiously waits how new TV provider AEG will broadcast the Bundesliga matches, the country’s biggest club threatened to break away and form its own TV deal. The 1.Bundesliga club officials believe they are entitled to a larger cut of the annual EUR 240 million deal that ARENA agreed to pay the German Football League (DFL) for Pay TV rights, a deal it secured earlier this year. Currently, the DFL awards a bonus to teams based on their finish in the league table the previous season. Bayern earned an extra EUR 16 million for last year’s finish, a figure the club said was unacceptable. “If we went elsewhere then they would roll out the red carpet and we would leave with a cheque for between EUR 75 and EUR 100 million,” Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “We lose out on about EUR 75 million by this system and there is no other country in Europe where this happens.” Aside from the club’s concerns, German football fans want to see how TV coverage changes under ARENA, which won the TV deal in a surprise decision over former rights holder Premiere AG. “ARENA must do their homework, but that is something which certainly needs some time,” DFL executive Christian Seifert said. “We would have liked to continue our partnership with Premiere, but they did only bid for one scenario and each bidder had to make its own entrepreneurial decisions.” Premiere actually put in the highest bid, but ARENA’s bid allowed clubs to profit from free TV, Internet and foreign TV rights.