Games of the German volleyball players around Lina Alsmeier (M.) in the Nations League and against Brazil could not be seen on analog television.
Photo: Imago/Renato Assis
If an area is still opposed to the slowly progressing loss of reach of linear television, then it is sports broadcasts. Favorite programs await you in media libraries for the perfect time to look at, new series are often produced directly by streaming platforms such as Netflix. But the live experience remains indispensable for die-hard sports fans.
For this reason, television channels still spend billions for transmission licenses, but only limited to a few sports such as football, professional boxes or tennis as well as few major events such as the Olympic Games. Association representatives of smaller sports have given up almost everywhere to criticize unjust treatment at all. They are satisfied with a niche existence far behind the football, which with the now immensely enlarged club World Cup displaces them further from the scene.
Examples of better side by side exist: Baseball, American football, basketball and ice hockey have been almost equal to sports fans in North America for decades. Clubs and organizers of the four leagues reach millions of TV viewers every day and implement billions of dollars. In Poland in turn, volleyball has developed into a second spectator magnet next to football: the domestic league has long since attracted the greatest stars, the men’s national team has become world and European champions in the past decade. In contrast, hardly anyone noticed that the German volleyball players in the Olympic quarter -finals of Paris failed two points in the later winner France.
The streaming platform Dyn had actually started to put team sports away from football more in this country. But especially with volleyball, it can be seen that there is not much behind it. The broadcasts of the Bundesliga games usually have to put the clammy clubs on their own, as is currently the case in the Nations League, the games of the national teams are not running on TV.
Even ARD and ZDF prefer to broadcast third -division football as world championships in swimming.
Wanted to see German fans their team, they had to subscribe to the English-language service of the Volleyball World Association for almost 15 euros per month. Well, in the middle of the season, ZDF suddenly gets into the transfer of the Nations League – via live streams on the Internet. The World Championships are currently underway in judo, but only the World Association showed it this week on its website.
Part of the problem are so -called sports channels in linear TV. When the volleyball players in Canada fought exciting duels, Sport1 was more likely to show any programs such as “My Style Rocks” or “Die PS professionals”, the channel Sport1+ to be paid to Motorsport from Australia and US baseball from the conservation.
“We would be happy if volleyball-especially with our national teams-were even more present on free TV. International competitions such as the Nations League or World Championships are a great opportunity to make our sport more visible, to develop and win new fans, «said the German Volleyball Association on ND request. »Overall, we see great potential for volleyball in Germany. Therefore, we hope that the transmitters and media houses will recognize the chance to offer attractive content beyond football with high -class international volleyball. «
Instead, the games from Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund are again broadcast-at the club World Cup in the USA, live from Sat.1. The women’s European Casketball Championships at the same time only runs on the Internet at streaming service. Of course, the fan base – and thus the potential number of spectators – is greater in football. But nothing will change if the broadcasters maintain their strategy. And: the concentration on football is even greater. Even ARD and ZDF prefer to broadcast third -division football as a world championships in swimming.
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This procedure is even a requirement: the broadcasting contract lists only Olympic Games and EM, World Cup, DFB Cup and European Cup games in football under “Events of considerable social importance”. Ingo Weiss, President of the German Basketball Association (DBB), has repeatedly criticized ARD and ZDF in the past few years that the public under the rights of important tournaments of the extremely successful German basketball players had not even been interested.
Even if the DBB is now very satisfied with our media partner Magentasport “to” ND “is very satisfied with where the games can be seen free of charge, they usually only reach basketball clientele there. Expansion of the fan base is so difficult. And the upturn to the women should also fizzle out for women as well as the hoped-for boom after the first German World Cup title of men almost two years ago.