Apple TV+ wants to stream Germany's top football league

Germany's Bundesliga has reportedly been in talks with Apple about Apple TV+ taking over streaming rights from ESPN from the start of the 2026/27 football season.

Apple is regularly reported to be exploring the addition of European football to its live sport streaming, particularly with both the UK and Dutch leagues. Now according to World Soccer Talk, the company has been in talks with Germany's professional association football league, the Bundesliga, best known worldwide for the team FC Bayern Munich.

Reportedly, ESPN has the exclusive streaming-only rights to the Bundesliga for the US, with a contract that began in 2020.

The deal is currently said to be worth $30 million annually to the Bundesliga, and the contract is set to conclude at the end of the 2025/26 season. The Bundesliga's streaming-only deal with Canadian service DAZN is also due to expire at the end of the season in 2026 — and so do an unspecified number of other worldwide deals.

Apple tends to want worldwide rights to everything it acquires, so it's possible that Apple TV+ may bring German football to a global audience.

However, unnamed sources told World Soccer Talk that the Bundesliga's talks with Apple have so far been preliminary. Neither Apple nor Bundesliga have commented on the discussion.

7 Comments

thedba 12 Years · 790 comments

About 1 year ago

Bundesliga is fine but I would love that Apple TV+ gets streaming rights to the Premier League.

FuboTV has the streaming rights in Canada and their interface is god awful. Even the highlights they post on YouTube are grossly underwhelming.

sflagel 11 Years · 867 comments

The Bundesliga? The most boring football league in all of Europe? Unless Apple plans to use its financial might and global footprint to restructure it to make it more interesting, no one will tune in. Premier League is the only truly competitive league.

winstoner71 7 Years · 117 comments

sflagel said:

The Bundesliga? The most boring football league in all of Europe? Unless Apple plans to use its financial might and global footprint to restructure it to make it more interesting, no one will tune in. Premier League is the only truly competitive league.

It’s literally not? Defense is a dirty word in the Bundesliga, so the games are fast paced back and forth affairs. Nothing boring at all about that league.

apple1991 13 Years · 36 comments

Bundesliga would be huge for Apple.

sflagel said:

The Bundesliga? The most boring football league in all of Europe? Unless Apple plans to use its financial might and global footprint to restructure it to make it more interesting, no one will tune in. Premier League is the only truly competitive league.

I wouldn't call the Bundesliga boring any more than I would call the Premier League boring due to the fact that City has won it 4 of the last 5 years.
I really liked it when DAZN had the rights to the PL since they also had Carabao Cup as well as Champions League and Europa League.
Unfortunately they lost that.
Hopefully sometime in the not too distant future Apple can have all this under one roof.