The public TV stations want to save more on sports.

This was announced by ARD sports coordinator Axel Balkausky and ZDF sports strategy officer Thomas Fuhrmann at the “Neuland” congress in Aachen on Wednesday. “We know that we have to make savings,” said Balkausky. He said this was primarily in the acquisition of licences: “We will have to share more and more rights.”

Balkausky referred to sub-licensing models such as with the new sports TV channel Dyn, which provides live coverage of handball and basketball, among other things. Most recently, ARD and ZDF had also concluded a similar contract with Telekom for the 3rd Football League.

The ARD head of sports said that the cost-cutting measures would “primarily affect football”, without giving details. “Diversity is the top heading in everything we do.” ARD says it has a total sports rights budget of around €237.5 million a year on average between 2021 and 2024. ZDF does not provide any information on this.