Flexible budgets: Inside the DFL's new customisable camera concepts for Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 rights holders By Heather McLean Monday, September 29, 2025 - 11:00
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FC Bayern M nchen won the 2024/25 Bundesliga title with the league's top scorer, Harry Kane, pictured with the Meisterschale trophy [Credit: DFL/Getty Images/Jan Hetfleisch]
The Deutsche Fu ball Liga (DFL) has just begun the first year in a new domestic rights cycle of four years for the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 leagues.
As with every rights cycle the league enters, the camera plans were reviewed prior to the new season. However, in a first for this season and a first in Europe, the DFL has introduced a flexible budget into broadcasters' rights packages that means they are able to request additional cameras that will enhance their offerings to viewers.
Prior to this rights cycle, the DFL carried out quantitative and qualitative analysis on the cameras used during matches. Speaking to SVG Europe, Dominik Scholler, the DFL's vice president of product management and innovation, says: We always develop our camera concepts and for new rights cycles we try to optimise on the previous one. What we've done now is a lot of analysis about our base signal, and just trying to understand which cameras are used and how often.
It's both quantitative analysis where we look at what is the share of each camera within the signal, but also qualitative analysis where we have focus groups and so on. We try to differentiate with our camera concepts; we always want to guarantee a quite high minimum standard, which is usually higher compared to other top leagues. So Bundesliga 2 for example is always produced with at least 11 cameras, and Bundesliga is always produced with at least 16 cameras; usually the parallel Saturday 3.30pm matches are where we have the 16 camera standard.
This is actually independent from the tent pole approach, which is more about a little bit more access to the clubs that we can provide to media partners, versus the camera concept which is usually tied to the kickoff times, he continues. The newly created DFL tent pole matches are those that have been singled out for this season as games of particular interest, and therefore worthy of extra broadcaster access.
For the flagship match of every weekend in the season, which takes place at primetime on Saturday evenings, the DFL is using a Europa League Final match standard of 28 cameras.
Comments Scholler: We go up to 28 cameras for our top match, which is Saturday evening where we produce with 28 cameras; the standard of a Europa League Final. Then we have some further camera concepts when we have a free to air TV game, or the SuperCup for example, which is also produced with 28.
Sportcast and technical services provider TVN work with the DFL to bring the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 productions to life
Customisable camera concepts
As part of their rights this season, the DFL has given key broadcasters a flexible innovation budget, whereby they can use an allocated budget which is part of their package to request additional cameras for specific matches. Scholler says this new rights innovation reduces the negotiations the DFL previously had to hold with rights holders for more cameras at additional cost.
On how the flex budget came about, Scholler says it has been on the cards for some time: When you optimise a camera standup, it's always about two main factors. The first one is the output quality, and of course more cameras or better cameras. It's always a good thing. The other factor is of course costs, because if you produce every game with 28 cameras, it will just get too expensive and this is also not what we need.
Our challenge in the beginning is we don't know who will buy which [rights] package, so we can't customise it at that stage. But we said, okay, we will define a camera standard, which is then from our perspective, optimised for the respective kick off slots . But we wanted to provide the media partners then with the ability or possibility to enhance it to their needs. And that's why we came up with that idea of the flex budget.
He continues: We have basically allocated additional budgets to the live broadcasters so they can also decide, for example, if they have a match with 20 cameras but they say, but there are two cameras missing that I would like to have as part of my broadcast , Scholler notes.
They basically have a budget allocation from our side to their side that we call a flex budget, where they have the chance to enhance the camera standard or even the audio standard to their needs and say, well, I would like to have an additional cine cam or I would like to use the ACS, or I would like to use the ref cam . So the broadcasters can then basically customise the camera concept to their needs.
This is new and for the next four years it provides the broadcasters with the flexibility to enhance their standards, he says.
Sky Deutschland is now broadcasting the Bundesliga's Friday evening match live in its new Flutlicht-Freitag' [ Floodlight Friday'] programme
Removing the nitty gritty
Scholler says that the flex budget has been well-received by broadcasters. Sky Deutschland is now broadcasting the Bundesliga's Friday evening match live in its new Flutlicht-Freitag' [ Floodlight Friday'] programme, and it is making good use of the flex budget.
He says: Sky has Floodlight Friday, its new brand for the Friday matches. They said, we want to enhance it to a higher camera standard and we want to have UHD and we want to have 3D audio, so that's basically what they do now, using their flex budget for that. And for example, DAZN is doing the same with the Sunday matches, basically also choosing additional cameras they would like t
