Agency Report –
Berlin – The German Football League (DFL) has not managed to increase its income from marketing abroad for the new season, with the €218 million ($255 million) generated being the same figure as in 2024-25, dpa has learnt.
The last deals, including in Britain and Japan, were done shortly before the start of the 2025-26 campaign.
Overall international income, including sponsoring, is around €302 million.
Bundesliga clubs had hoped for more income from international rights as pre-coronavirus foreign marketing was as high as €275 million. The figure dropped by around €100 million during the pandemic but has risen again since then, before grwoth now appears to have stalled.
‘This is definitely an area for growth where we, as the Bundesliga, have room for improvement,” Borussia Dortmund managing director Carsten Cramer told dpa recently.
Bundesliga international marketing income ranks third among the European top leagues, around one-tenth of what the dominant English Premier League generates, and one-third of Spain’s LaLiga income in this area.
The DFL is yet to comment on the new figures but a “growth path” identified by its managing director Steffen Merkel appears over.
“In many international markets, competition is intensifying over which media rights are considered essential, and in some of these markets we are more in the role of a challenger,” Merkel has said.
Domestic rights income meanwhile rose slightly by 2% to 1.121 billion per season 2025-29.
