By Florian Formen | Jul 05, 2023 3:37pm
For many years, Sky was the undisputed number 1 when it came to club football on TV. You could watch almost every Bundesliga game there, the DFB Cup and the Champions League – the most important competitions for a German football fan. But then DAZN suddenly got involved in the fight for the broadcasting rights. That made everything more complicated and expensive, especially for fans – our editor has a clear opinion on this.
In the early years of DAZN, the streaming service was still relatively unnecessary for football fans. They broadcast Bundesliga highlights and showed many international leagues such as the English Premier League, the Spanish LaLiga and the Italian Serie A. Nevertheless, the provider was not particularly relevant to me because the competitions on Sky were simply much more interesting, prestigious and important. At that time, DAZN was not generally characterized by football, but rather by other sports such as baseball. All of this came at a fair price and was not perceived as a rip-off by most sports fans. But over time, DAZN intervened more and more clearly in the fight for the Bundesliga broadcasting rights – and thus became an ever greater problem for football fans like me.
Which service broadcasts which football match?
In fact, no other sport is as complicated to follow all-encompassing games as soccer. Fans of the German Bundesliga are now having a particularly difficult time. The most important things at a glance:
Sky: Bundesliga 15:30 Saturday individual games; Bundesliga 15:30 Saturday conference; Bundesliga 18:30 Saturday top game; every game of the 2nd Bundesliga; every game of the DFB-Pokal; every Premier League game; Preis for the sports and Bundesliga package: 30 euros
DAZN: Bundesliga 20:30 Friday game; Bundesliga Sunday games; all Champions League games (except Tuesday’s top game); Series A; League 1; LaLiga; Preis for DAZN Unlimited: 29.99 euros (as a monthly subscription 44.99 euros)
Amazon: Champions League top game Tuesday; Preis for Prime Video 5.75 euros
So if you want to watch the Bundesliga comprehensively, you pay 60 euros a month – a steep price. There are additional costs for other leagues.
The dirty deal with Bundesliga kick-off times
In order to generate more money with the Bundesliga, the German Football League (DFL) increases the number of different kick-off times at will. As a result, there are more transmission packages to sell. But that’s a real problem for the fans. In addition, away fans often have to travel home across Germany on Sunday evenings anyway, in order to then get back to everyday life early in the morning the next day.
It was only through these many packages that DAZN got into the Bundesliga in the first place. For me the beginning of the end! Although the Friday games had been broadcast elsewhere for some time, I had already come to terms with that. But since the 2021/22 season, DAZN has been broadcasting all Friday and Sunday games. This means that one third of the Bundesliga games can only be seen exclusively on DAZN. Due to the more extensive rights, DAZN also raised the prices – you actually got more for your money. But that was the first blow for me, because like other fans I have needed two subscriptions to watch my beloved Bundesliga.
At first, as a new customer at DAZN, you still got small incentives such as a trial month to try out the whole thing. In the meantime, DAZN does not even allow its viewers that anymore.
DAZN secures more than the Bundesliga
But the Bundesliga games didn’t end there. Shortly thereafter, DAZN secured the broadcasting rights for the Champions League, the largest and most important international competition in club football, which was otherwise always seen on Sky. Now DAZN is also broadcasting the Champions League – the Wednesday games even exclusively. In order to see the top games on Tuesday, you also need Amazon Prime, despite the fact that the DAZN subscription is completely overpriced in my opinion.
But the saddest thing about it for me is that there isn’t even a conference like in previous years. Because you are forced to watch the Champions League on two different streaming platforms, which means that you have to sit at home with two screens to watch football. What nonsense!
High price, low quality…
A price can be justifiably high, but then the content and quality must also be right. Unfortunately, this is not the case with DAZN for me. The signal runtime is sometimes so slow that goals are first seen in the live ticker on the cell phone and only then in the course of the game on DAZN. Furthermore, technical problems with the streaming service are nothing new. Especially with top games and the correspondingly high demand, it happens again and again that problems creep in.
In my opinion, all this is not even the main problem with DAZN. Because, as already mentioned, that is definitely the price. You used to pay 24.99 euros for the DAZN standard subscription. You might think that you can at least stream any DAZN content with it. Wrong thought! Whole sports such as darts or handball were not included in the standard package. The icing on the cake was that you could stream DAZN on a maximum of one other device in parallel and register a maximum of three devices. Pure madness for the price! With the standard subscription, you couldn’t even watch the Bundesliga conference or the top Bundesliga game. After all, Champions League games and Sunday Bundesliga games were included.
Price increase at DAZN
But even this subscription is now history. DAZN has its prices on July 4, 2023 – not for the first time; the previous change was made earlier this year – raised. This is accompanied by a general change to the previous subscription model. The standard subscription is no longer available in the form described. Instead, there are now three new tariffs: DAZN Unlimited, DAZN Super Sports and DAZN World.
The change hits football fans in particular again. If you want to watch the Bundesliga and Champions League, you have to book the most expensive unlimited model for 29.99 or 44.99 euros per month, depending on whether you choose the monthly or annual model. After all, you can use it to watch any DAZN content, including American football or the UFC. Personally, I would have preferred to save the 5 euros and forego other sports. The only major advantage of the new package for me is that you can stream on two devices at the same time and register up to six devices in total.
DAZN is not the sole culprit
For me, the root of the whole thing is not DAZN. It’s a general problem that you can hardly see live football on free TV anymore. Unfortunately, highlight programs such as the sports show or the current sports studio cannot keep up with live transmissions on pay TV. The emotions and the excitement are simply missing, because you usually know the results or special events such as penalties or red cards in advance.
The only games that are always shown on free TV are those of the national team. But in the current form of our national team, there may not be much enthusiasm. It is all the more important that more games in our national Bundesliga than just the season opener and the DFB Cup final are broadcast on free TV. But that currently seems as likely as HSV becoming champions…