DFL undervalued TV rights according to SPORTFIVE

Thomas Röttgermann, managing director of the German sports marketing agency SPORTFIVE, said the German Football League (DFL) undervalued itself when it sold broadcast rights to Leo Kirch.

The DFL sold domestic distribution rights to Sirius, Kirch's company for six years, at EUR 3 billion.

"If you ask me, I think that the Bundesliga rights are worth more," Röttgermann told the Die Welt newspaper. "If I had been in the shoes of the DFL's chief executive Christian Seifert, I would have been gutsier. Leo Kirch also appears to consider the rights to be worth more, or else he wouldn't have done the deal."

Röttgermann admitted that SPORTFIVE would have loved the rights, and said he was surprised there was not a tender made, something that could have driven up the price of the deal.

Röttgermann also pointed out that, in 2002, Kirch's media group faced a financial collapse while holding league rights. At that time, many German clubs faced mounting debts due to the media collapse.

Source: euFootball.BIZ © Copyright 2006 - All rights reserved.