Deutsche Telekom (DT), the German telecommunications giant, has secured a wide-ranging package of soccer rights from global governing body FIFA, encompassing multiple World Cup events across different categories.
The four-tournament package includes games from the 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup, the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and the youth-category U20 World Cups in 2025 and 2027.
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This will be the first time that DT will hold the rights for a FIFA Women’s World Cup, which in 2027 will take place in Brazil.
Games will be broadcast on DT’s MagentaTV OTT streaming service, on which it will also host highlights, game clips, interviews, shoulder content, and ancillary programming.
Despite the exclusive nature of the deal, Deutsche Telekom is likely to sublicense games out to public service broadcasters such as ARD and ZDF, or commercial free-to-air network RTL, to comply with German broadcasting law, which necessitates free-to-air coverage of fixtures involving the German national team in such major competitions.
A similar deal occurred with the 2024 European Championships, hosted in Germany, for which DT held exclusive rights.
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By GlobalDataIn a reciprocal deal, DT sub-licensed the rights to that tournament to ARD and ZDF, in exchange for the rights to all 64 games of the 2022 FIFA World Cup (16 of which were exclusive games).
Combined, the new DT rights package will total 272 games of coverage, a deal that DT is calling the “largest World Cup package ever”, in part thanks to the expanded men’s World Cup format of 48 teams, making that tournament total 104 matches in itself.
Speaking on the burden of broadcasting the expanded men’s World Cup in 2026 – one that will occur across multiple time zones with a large difference to European time – DT’s head of TV Arnim Butzen said: “48 participating nations, 104 matches over six weeks – this is the biggest football tournament of all time.
“For us and our partners, this will be a sprint over a marathon distance. This is especially true due to the different time zones in the three host countries. We are happy to accept this logistical challenge and want to make the World Cup an unforgettable football experience for our customers.”
DT is a long-time partner of German soccer's DFB governing body and the German national team, a deal that was renewed in late 2024 to run through the 2026 tournament.
