German telco Deutsche Telekom has renewed key basketball rights deals with the International Basketball Federation (Fiba), the German Basketball Federation (DBB) and Euroleague Ventures, the joint venture between EuroLeague Basketball and the IMG agency.

News of the trio of Deutsche Telekom renewals came as Germany’s Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) announced the launch of an official channel on Twitch, the Amazon-owned online streaming platform traditionally associated with esports.

Deutsche Telekom has agreed a new deal with Fiba Media – the joint venture between sports media company DAZN Group and Fiba – that runs until 2025.

It includes rights to the Fiba ​​EuroBasket 2022, the Fiba ​​Basketball World Cup 2023 and the Fiba ​​EuroBasket 2025 and all qualification games.

​​The EuroBasket tournament in 2022 was due to take place in 2021 but has been moved to 2022 following the postponement of the 2020 Olympic Games to this year. It will be hosted in the German cities of Cologne and Berlin and thus Germany has already been confirmed as a participant.

Deutsche Telekom’s current deal with Fiba was signed in 2017 and was due to run out this year.

The telco has also renewed its rights to those events and games organised by the DBB until the end of 2023. Rights include German national basketball team games and the German Supercup.

As well as the Fiba and DBB deals, the telco has also agreed a new two-season deal for EuroLeague and EuroCup rights, covering 2021-22 and 2022-23, with Euroleague Ventures.

The deal extends the telco’s coverage of EuroLeague, which began in 2015. Its most recent deal with Euroleague Ventures started in 2018-19 and expires at the end of the 2020-21 season.

Alex Ferrer Kristjansson, marketing and communication senior director at Euroleague Basketball said: “We are extremely satisfied by renewing our commitment with Deutsche Telekom for two more seasons.

“Germany is one of our most important strategic markets with an enormous growth margin and we are developing a specific market strategy to increase our footprint in the territory.”

Henning Stiegenroth, head of content and sponsoring at Deutsche Telekom, said: “We are delighted about the extensions with Euroleague Basketball. This shows that we are a reliable partner and can continue to offer our fans first-class, exclusive basketball.”

Deutsche Telekom airs all its basketball rights on its MagentaSport subscription channels.

Its flagship basketball property is the domestic top-tier BBL. Its current rights deal with the league runs out at the end of the 2022-23 season.

Last week, Deutsche Telekom also extended its broadcast rights to German football's third-tier. Liga to include the 2022-23 season, as well as extending a distribution agreement with DAZN that will see it continue to carry the latter’s OTT platform on Magenta till 2025.

Basketball Bundesliga launches on Twitch

Heralding its move as the first German sports league to enter into a partnership with Twitch, the Basketball Bundesliga said that its goal is to expand its brand contact points digitally to attract new target groups for the league, its clubs and sponsors in the long term.

The easyCredit BBL channel on Twitch will offer a combination of live streaming and simultaneous live interaction with users around league topics. There will be a mix of sports, entertainment and gaming content.

A ‘digital All-Star Day’ is being planned around the All-Star match to improve interaction despite the ongoing ban on spectators in venues.

In July, last year Twitch made its most significant move yet in ‘traditional’ sports with the creation of a standalone sports vertical on the back of a quartet of content deals with leading European football clubs.

Twitch introduced ‘Sports’ as its own category and relaunched the TwitchSports channel. Twitch formerly agreed content deals with Real Madrid and English Premier League outfit Arsenal, with both teams establishing channels on the platform in a bid to tap into its powerful demographic.

These two deals were supplemented by agreements with Serie A outfit Juventus and Ligue 1 club Paris Saint-Germain.

A tie-up with LaLiga was announced some months later.

 

Source: Sportbusiness.com