ARD and ZDF, Germany's two prominent public service broadcasters, have agreed a reciprocal sublicensing agreement with Deutsche Telekom covering soccer’s showpiece 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 UEFA European Championship national team tournaments.
Under the arrangement, ARD and ZDF will each show 30 matches from next year’s World Cup and 17 matches from Euro 2028 free-to-air.
Deutsche Telekom’s MagentaTV platform will broadcast all 104 World Cup games and all 51 Euro fixtures live, with exclusive coverage of 44 World Cup and 17 Euro matches.
The exclusive games include two quarter-finals and three round-of-16 ties from each tournament.
Deutsche Telekom secured rights to the 2026 World Cup in May under a wide-ranging deal with global governing body FIFA that also includes the 2027 women’s edition.
Despite the exclusive nature of the deal, Deutsche Telekom was always likely to sublicense games out to ARD and ZDF to comply with German broadcasting law, which necessitates free-to-air coverage of fixtures involving the national team in such major competitions.
A similar deal occurred with Euro 2024, hosted in Germany, for which Deutsche Telekom held exclusive rights. Deutsche Telekom also 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).
ARD and ZDF, meanwhile, acquired domestic rights to Euro 2028 in January.
The public broadcasters already hold domestic rights to all German national team matches through 2028 under a deal struck in 2023.
The 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico will feature 104 matches due to the expanded 48-team format. Of MagentaTV’s exclusive matches, 11 will be knockout games, including all six matches in the newly introduced round of 32.
Euro 2028 will be hosted by the United Kingdom and Ireland, and for both tournaments, MagentaTV will again provide its conference mode, allowing viewers to follow simultaneous group-stage matches live and switch between games.
