From a 10K world premiere to RefCam and in car-entertainment, the annual curtain-raiser in Leverkusen was the German Football League’s (DFL’s) latest chance to show off its innovative side.
For a league that prides itself on promoting the next big thing on the pitch through its commitment to youth development, the Bundesliga has also long pioneered technological advancements in the audiovisual aspects of its product.
“We try to be ahead of the curve by trying new things very early. We look at disruptive tech, which has the potential to really revolutionise how you experience media products, such as immersive reality,” says Dominic Scholler, the DFL’s vice-president of product management and innovation.
“At the same time, incremental innovations are very important for us because these help to constantly improve our media product. Because none of us can really predict the future it’s very important to monitor each innovation to understand which ones we move forward with.”
Scholler is speaking on Saturday evening ahead of Bayer 04 Leverkusen’s penalty shootout win over Stuttgart at the 2024 Supercup, the annual curtain-raiser to the Bundesliga season. On the pitch it was business as usual as Bayer 04 scored a late equaliser – a regular occurrence en route to their unbeaten title winning season.
Yet off the pitch, it was a game of firsts for the DFL and Sportcast, its host broadcast subsidiary founded in 2006.
Immersive experiences
The 30,000-seat BayArena was the scene for the DFL to deliver the world’s first 10K resolution VR live stream of a football match in partnership with Berlin-based tech start-up Softseed.
“This is not just the premiere for football, this is a world premiere,” declared an excited Stefan Kiwit (pictured below), one of three founders of Softseed. “Of course, we have tested it, but we haven’t done this live before.”
Wearing a head-mounted display, special camera technology allows a 360-degree view as if the user was standing in the stadium. Multiple perspectives are offered. For the Supercup, the live trial was experienced on the Apple Vision Pro.
The 10K live stream had a latency of under 35 seconds, a remarkably short timeframe given one terabyte of data per minute is being processed.
It was some five years ago that the DFL claimed a broadcasting world-first, using 5G mobile communications technology to deliver a real-time, in-stadium augmented reality experience to selected guests for the Bundesliga clash between Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim.
Man in the middle
It is said in football that a good refereeing performance is one where you don’t remember the referee.
For the Supercup, however, Tobias Stieler was the star of the show, until kick-off anyway.
The referee wore a headset camera as the teams walked out and completed the coin toss, which was shown live by the game’s broadcasters, pay-television’s Sky and commercial network Sat.1.
When the match started, the live feed was immediately cut as the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the game’s lawmaker, does not permit live footage of RefCams.
Scholler says: “We are trying to push them and I personally think it’s probably only a question of time. When it is allowed we want to be in the position that we can activate it.”
Weighing just 6 grams, the camera features a mute and shutdown function for the microphone to ensure privacy for the referee using the system. During the game, a select group of people were able to listen into the referee explaining his on-field decisions to the players.
RefCam debuted as a trial in a Bundesliga match at the end of February between Eintracht Frankfurt and VfL Wolfsburg, albeit using just the record-only version.
The images were not included in the live broadcast or the match summaries. Instead, the recorded material was used for a half-hour report entitled ‘Referees Mic’d up – Bundesliga’, which was produced by Sportcast and made available to the DFL’s national and international rights-holding broadcasters a month later.
In-car live match streaming
Global in-flight and in-ship media rights have become a regular part of a rights-owner’s arsenal. Could in-car rights be set to join them? The DFL certainly thinks so.
Last year, the DFL became the world’s first major professional football league to test Bundesliga content for in-car entertainment systems in cooperation with German car manufacturer BMW. The pilot phase will now be extended for another season, the DFL announced this week.
“We see a trend within the automotive industry to develop in-car entertainment systems and therefore they need the best content,” says Roman Schade, the DFL’s head of audio visual rights in the DACH region. “We think that Bundesliga is really valuable in this regard.”
For the Supercup, an €180,000 ($200,000) BWM 7 Series car live streamed the action from the Outside Broadcasting compound at the BayArena.
Thankfully, it does work in cheaper models. Indeed, the pilot programme featuring live in-car Bundesliga matches is already included in over 400,000 vehicles, and the DFL hopes that will triple by year-end.
The BMW agreement is non-exclusive, as the DFL looks for other car manufacturers to sign up.
In terms of potentially monetising in-car entertainment, the DFL would have to sell this as a global right given the challenges associated with geoblocking when driving through Europe.
During the next year of the test case, the DFL and BMW will bring Bundesliga highlight clips and selected live broadcasts to vehicle screens. While running images are only available when stationary in most vehicles for safety reasons, the games in the BMW 7 Series can even be followed live while driving – in Germany at speeds of up to 60kmph.
More angles, more access
With all Bundesliga matches shown live, the DFL has faced the challenge of generating more money from broadcasters without being able to offer more inventory.
In a bid to address that, its audiovisual rights team has collaborated with Sportcast to innovate production and give media partners greater access to players when the new domestic rights cycle begins with the 2025-26 season.
At present a total of 19 cameras are used at most Bundesliga matches, rising to 21 for the top matches each weekend.
For the Supercup, there were 29 cameras installed around the BayArena as the league trialled new innovations aimed at getting closer to the players.
As per an agreement reached in late December, clubs will cooperate more with the league’s broadcasters, enhancing coverage during the week and on matchdays. This will include more interview opportunities, such as with players coming off the team bus and on the pitch immediately at full-time.
While none of these additions will be available during the 2024-25 season, the final year of the current rights cycle, it was trialled in Leverkusen.
One camera was placed on each team bus as well as outside each dressing room, albeit not inside the dressing rooms and there was no audio. This has been pushed by Sportcast and broadcasters, but firmly rejected by clubs.
Interviews were also conducted with a player from the starting line-up of each team as they disembarked from the bus, one with Sky and one with Sat.1.
‘Super, super flash’ interviews were also staged immediately after the final whistle with players and managers on the pitch, as well as a half-time interview with one of each teams’ assistant coaches to try and ascertain what was discussed in the dressing room.
Further such trials will be run throughout the season, with the aim of them becoming a regular part of Bundesliga matchday coverage from 2025-26.
“We try to understand what the best examples are that we can see in the general entertainment industry,” explains Scholler. “We ask for feedback from fans and media partners and adapt our media product. Everything is an effort to get viewers closer to the pitch and the atmosphere.”