The German Football Association (DFB) is inviting bids for the audio-visual media rights to the Men’s DFB-Pokal for Germany and the German-speaking territories from 2022/23 through to the 2025/26 season. Corporations can now express their interest by emailing ausschreibung2021@dfb.de. The registration deadline is 14th May 2021. The decision on the awarding of the contract is expected to be made in late summer this year.

Holger Blask, managing director of DFB GmbH, said: “The fascination of the DFB-Pokal lies in its traditional format and the simple ‘winner goes through’ mode. The new tender for media rights is aimed at delivering unforgettable David-versus-Goliath moments to fans on various media platforms in the future.”

The DFB is tendering the media rights under its own auspices and for four seasons. The tender features two live top-match packages for free or pay TV, plus another pay TV-only package covering all matches. However, at least the opening match, the semi-finals and the final are also guaranteed to be shown free-to-air. In addition, several rights packages will be offered to provide linear highlights (free TV) and/or free non-linear highlights.

“Following comprehensive market analysis and consultation, we have developed clearly structured and attractive rights packages that reflect the interests of the different market participants and are designed for the successful bidders to create modern and user-friendly linear and non-linear media offerings in the interest of the fans,” explains Holger Blask.

From the 2022/23 season onwards, the DFB-Pokal will be even more present in the German football calendar – and therefore also on TV. Fans can look forward to 15 top matches on TV per season, two more than before. The two additional broadcasts are the result of scheduling the German Supercup on the weekend of the first round proper of the DFB-Pokal. The two Supercup contenders will continue to take part in the first round of the DFB-Pokal and will play their respective matches on a Tuesday and Wednesday in September.

In addition, the four quarterfinal matches, previously played over two days, will now be staggered over four days, with kick-off scheduled for 20:45 CEST.

At the same time, the DFB-Pokal fixture list will be given a clearer basic structure by scheduling three rounds each before and after the winter break. This will also eliminate the three-month break between the second round and the last 16. But there is no rule without exception – due to the winter World Cup in Qatar, it is more than likely that only two rounds can be accommodated for before the end of 2022.

Holger Blask promised: “In addition to further improvements in terms of production quality, we will collect and integrate match data in the future and have enriched the rights packages with, among other features, non-linear clip offers, greatly facilitating every media usage behaviour, be it live, time-delayed or on-demand.”

Tender schedule
• from 26th April: Dispatch of procedural regulations to interested corporations
• 14th May: Registration deadline
• 17th May: Dispatch of tender documents to registered corporations
• early/mid-June: Information phase, during which the DFB is open to questions and/or comments about the tender from registered corporations
• expected 15-21 July: Award procedure