Christmas 🎁 came early for the 🇩🇪 Bundesliga in the 🇺🇸 United States this year: For just the second time during the 2018/19 season, a Bundesliga match on Fox Sports cracked the daily list of the 150 most-watched cable programs on U.S. linear television: A table-topping match-up between Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Moenchengladbach (12/21) and a particularly low threshold to make the list (+/- 61,000) due to some favourable circumstances (think: few amount of other live sports events) did the trick: drawing +/- 81,000 viewers on FS1 and finishing on the 149th place on the Friday before Christmas. 🎊
I wanted to use this somewhat newsworthy event to follow-up on my initial blog on the lack of success of the Bundesliga in the United States in spite of some rather favourable conditions in the past:
🥇 FIFA World Cup Winner (2014),
🏆 UEFA Champions League Winner (2012/13),
🏃♂ US American Youngsters in the Bundesliga (think: Pulisic),
📺 Widely available broadcasting partner (> 80m TV households).
However, someone can even make the argument that the Bundesliga was already further along a few years ago and lost ground to other European football leagues in the United States ever since. Significant changes are on the horizon, with the current broadcasting deal expiring after the 2019/20 season: After shortly taking the temperature of the „growth sports“ soccer in the United States in general, a landscape that continues to be dominate by the 🇲🇽 Mexican Liga MX and 🇬🇧 English Premier League despite any ambitions of the domestic MLS or other European football leagues, I looked into the (potential) future of the Bundesliga in the world’s biggest sports media market:
1️⃣ The Looming End of the Partnership with Fox Sports
Is there any room left for the Bundesliga in the future strategy of „New FOX,“ the slimmed-down and greatly different version of 21st Century FOX after off-loading most of its entertainment assets to Disney? Focusing on the news and live sports genre going forward, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has already committed billions of dollars to other, more established sports properties in recent months (think: WWE, MLB). Bundesliga could be the odd-man-out.
2️⃣ … or not so fast?
There are two main factors that could take the (unsuccessful) partnership between the Bundesliga and Fox Sports beyond 2020 in the United States: First, the Bundesliga is the only real club-football league in Fox Sports’ lineup. Retaining much-needed on-air talent for upcoming FIFA World Cups could become difficult without the Bundesliga. Getting its hands at a one-for-one replacement for the weekend’s early-morning hours (think: EPL, La Liga) seems to be a long-shot as well. Second, the business ties between Fox Sports and the German top-flight football league reach far beyond the United States, still holding Bundesliga broadcasting rights in +/- 40 international territories worldwide.
3️⃣ DAZN US + Bundesliga = A Match Made in Heaven?
DAZN seems to be a logical landing spot for the Bundesliga after the upcoming season: The pure-sports streaming platform continues to be in dire need for long-tail content in the U.S. complementing its marquee but highly cyclical fighting events. At the same time, DAZN remains a long-shot for the market’s biggest sports properties in the medium-term future (think: NFL), and becoming the league’s domestic live broadcasting partner next to Sky Deutschland in 2021 in Germany seems already to be a foregone conclusion anyway. Should it also be a foregone conclusion that the Bundesliga moves over to DAZN US, even one year before doing the same in Germany?
🚨 In pursuit of untapped revenue sources to sustain the impressive revenue growth of the past decade, the Bundesliga has made the next media rights deal the immediate top priority for the local office in the United States, which just opened last October and is an obvious result of the league’s shifted focus from Asia to North America. Any activities in and around China have rather developed into long-term plays at best, instead of having any immediate impact on the league’s top and bottom line. The North American sports market gets increasingly crowded, though, and significant changes for the Bundesliga are needed to have any real success moving forward. ☝🏼
