New deal runs until the end of the 2025/26 season
Bundesliga International and IMG have extended their video archive partnership until the end of the 2025/26 season.
IMG retains the rights to sublicense Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 archive content to territories across the world excluding Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. It will also support global media companies, brands and partners to sub-license content from the DFL Deutsche Fusball Liga’s comprehensive historical database, which spans 60 years, going back to its inaugural 1963-64 season.
The DFL Media Hub includes over 200,000 hours of historical film and video recordings from the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2, as well as working with the DFB (German Football Association) to include Liga 3, the Women’s Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal and men’s and women’s international matches.
It is available through DFL’s fully-owned subsidiary Sportcast, and has over 12,000 hours of video material added every season. Machine learning and AI are used to support match action recognition, logging and storage, and search. It also has ’Face and Emotion Recognition’ to recognise specific players and the related emotions automatically.
The deal also sees certain footage made available through IMG Replay, alongside selected archive highlights and programming.
Peer Naubert, chief marketing officer of Bundesliga International, said: “This season, we celebrate 60 years of the Bundesliga: with consistently more goals than any other league over the last 30 years, moments and matches that stand the test of time, and a passion that has been passed on from generation to generation. Through our long-lasting partnership with IMG, we are able to ensure that these unforgettable snippets of German football history and culture are not only preserved, but shared and enjoyed around the world.”
Tom Barnes, vice president of IMG Replay, added: “Bundesliga has given us some of the most memorable action in world football featuring legends of the game like Franck Ribery, Kevin Keegan, Jay-Jay Okocha and Robert Lewandowski. As one of the most popular leagues in the world, we are delighted to renew our long-term archive partnership and give current and future generations a chance to relive these iconic moments again and again.”
Image: DFL/Getty Images/Vladimir Rys/Bongarts
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