Athletia and Deutsche Fußball Liga launch joint venture to curb piracy

The Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL), a subsidiary of German football association Die Liga – Fußballverband, has entered into a partnership with content management service Athletia to monitor pirated broadcasts of Bundesliga football league matches.

In an announcement on Wednesday, August 7, Athletia said the new joint venture, named “ryghts” will add web-streaming and IPTV to its rights protection business.

Athletia currently supports approximately 80 international clubs, leagues and associations in rights protection.

Since 2015, it has been handling cases on behalf of the DFL in which protected content has been distributed on social media without authorisation.

Athletia said the DFL will hold a share in ryghts in the lower double-digit percentage range.

The DFL said this is the first time is entrusting proceedings against piracy violations in the areas of social media, web and IPTV to a single service provider.

DFL’s CEO, Christian Seifert, said ryghts “has enormous potential for the future”.

“Protection from the illegal distribution of valuable content is a crucial factor in the economic success of a sports organisation and its media partners,” he said.

Seifert added: “Holding shares in a company that aims to better protect media rights is a compelling update of our strategy. We want to cover large parts of the media value chain around professional football and also develop services for other sports leagues from that.”

A managing director at Athletia, Britta Sölter, said the joint venture would take its long-standing cooperation with the DFL to a new level.

Sölter said: “As a result of digitalisation, completely new possibilities are opening up not only for sports broadcasts, but also for illegal business models.

“Monitoring these and giving sports rights holders control over their value creation is the objective of ryghts. In this context, we take a positive view of the demand for our product and believe in international growth.”