German soccer’s top-flight Bundesliga has agreed a free-to-air (FTA) rights deal in Japan with sports streaming platform Abema for the upcoming 2025-26 season.
Through the agreement, Abema will show two league games FTA every week throughout the campaign, alongside highlights, and original programming.
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The OTT platform will specifically focus on clubs with Japanese players.
Coverage will begin with Freiburg vs. Augsburg and Mainz vs. Cologne this weekend as the new season gets underway.
In the second matchday, Abema will show Stuttgart vs. Borussia Monchengladbach and Wolfsburg vs. Mainz.
The deal provides additional exposure in Japan for the Bundesliga after global subscription streaming service DAZN recently secured the main bulk of rights in the market for the next three seasons.
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By GlobalDataThrough the 2025-26, 2026-27, and 2027-28 campaigns, DAZN has rights to cover all nine Bundesliga matches per gameweek, across all 34 rounds.
Last season, Bundesliga action in Japan was covered by Abema, through a sub-licensing tie-up with original rights-holder Sky PerfecTV (whose deal expired at the end of 2024-25).
Abema also aired 104 Bundesliga games in the 2023-24 campaign, after an initial deal covering 45 matches in the latter stages of the 2022-23 season.
A total of 14 Japanese players feature in the Bundesliga and second-tier Bundesliga 2 squads for the 2025-26 season, including Bayern Munich's Hiroki Itō, Eintracht Frankfurt's new signing Ritsu Dōan, Kaishu Sano (Mainz), Yuito Suzuki (Freiburg), and Shuto Machino (Borussia Monchengladbach).
Since the German league started in 1963-64, a total of 48 Japanese players have played in the Bundesliga, which is claimed to be more than any of the other top five European leagues.
Peer Naubert, Bundesliga International chief executive, said: “This new deal with Abema marks a significant step in expanding our reach in Japan and deepens our connection with one of Asia’s most passionate football audiences.
“We are the most active league in Japan, and creating touchpoints for fans is core to our approach. Our partnership with Abema helps us to increase our digital exposure in Japan.”
Bundesliga International, the league’s commercial arm, has concluded several rights deals in the Asian market recently with the likes of state-owned media and telecoms heavyweight Viettel in Vietnam and free-to-air channel PPTV in Thailand.
Yesterday, the league announced a four-year extension with United Media, the Southeast Europe-based media company, across nine territories, while it also agreed an extension in Italy with pay-TV heavyweight Sky Italia earlier this month.
Domestically, the Bundesliga will be covered live by Sky Deutschland and DAZN.
The 2025-26 season will begin on Friday (August 22), with defending champions Bayern Munich taking on RB Leipzig.
Meanwhile, the DFL German league organizing body has today announced a technology partnership with ServiceNow, the digital workflow company.
As the DFL's official workflow partner, ServiceNow is replacing legacy systems and "becoming the core AI platform to improve automation and efficiency in DFL’s business workflows."
Through the partnership, the league said it will be able to improve the experience for partners, clubs, and service providers.
The AI platform will provide "efficient solutions to all DFL stakeholders while supporting the group’s digital and direct-to-consumer ambitions."
This includes products in the areas of IT service management, human resources, and customer management.
DFL CEO Steffen Merkel said: “DFL stakeholders – be it clubs, partners, service providers, or our own employees – expect high-level experiences, and we’re focused on setting new standards in this respect.
“By partnering with ServiceNow, we’re transforming how we collaborate across our global ecosystem – leveraging automated workflows and services on a unified platform that supports our growth and strategic goal.
“Our clubs and partners are at the heart of the DFL ecosystem,” says Merkel. “By equipping it with a powerful AI-driven platform, we’re enabling faster decision-making, deeper insights, and more meaningful connections with all internal and external stakeholders.”
ServiceNow joins the DFL's portfolio of technology partners, which includes Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has had a partnership with the league since 2020 on various cloud, machine learning, and AI projects. AWS has also served as the DFL’s official generative AI provider since 2024.
