Frauen-Bundesliga Spotlight: Developing Broadcast Expertise and Pushing the Women's Game at the Deutscher Fuball-Bund

Evolving in-house: Developing broadcast expertise and pushing the women's game at the Deutscher Fu ball-Bund By Heather McLean

Tuesday, October 7, 2025 - 10:06

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Frauen Bundesliga the German women's premier league kicked off on 6 September with Bayern Munich Women versus Bayer Leverkusen Women and with an almost sold out stadium at the Allianz Arena in Munich

Up until four years ago, the Deutscher Fu ball-Bund (DFB) the German Football Association - outsourced its entire broadcast production for every league under its remit, which includes around 800 matches per year. But then, as some of those leagues such as the Frauen Bundesliga - the women's league - began to grow exponentially, and demands from broadcasters grew in complexity, it decided it was time to bring broadcast knowledge inhouse and take control.

Under the DFB sits all football in the German league system including men's and women's football other than Bundesliga and 2 Bundesliga, which sit under the jurisdiction of the Deutsche Fu ball Liga (DFL), which is itself a member of the DFB.

The 21 German state associations of the DFB have a combined number of 23,868 clubs with little more than eight million members, making the DFB the single largest sports federation in the world.

Says Daub: We are responsible for more or less 800 matches host broadcasting-wise each a year across all those competitions. But the production team, which I'm leading, is now four people. There was no production team five years ago; there was no broadcasting team, there was only the media rights department.

Daub was previously part of the media rights department, which then also managed the broadcast production for the many annual matches that took place under the DFB's guidance.

Daub says: We had our supplier, and we gave them shit loads of money and told them, please do the production and only call us if the OB van is burning . So there was no broadcasting expertise [inside the DFB]. But then I started in the media rights department seven years ago, and four years ago we said we need to have our own broadcasting team.

As the Frauen Bundesliga has grown exponentially, the Deutscher Fu ball-Bund (DFB) the German Football Association and the Women's Bundesliga have teamed up to create a joint venture that will see the league stand independently, and continue to grow

Broadcast expertise

On why the decision was made to bring some broadcasting expertise inhouse, Daub says it was because the Association realised that rights holder requirements were becoming more complex and the DFB needed to step up in order to meet those needs.

Read more Growing the game: The Deutscher Fu ball-Bund on pushing production innovation for the rapidly growing Women's Bundesliga

Daub explains: We experienced that with the broadcasters there is a change in [the way they wanted to broadcast] matches. They now want to have more positions, they want to have more cameras, and special cameras.

We are growing and growing and growing, so we started doing the host production for the third league four or five years ago, Daub continues. Two or three years ago we started being the host broadcaster for all the women's matches, and then we realised we need our own production broadcasting team.

As Daub was previously responsible for the competition management of the DFB-Cup for the 3 League, and having been a venue operations broadcasting manager at UEFA prior to joining the DFB and still fulfilling that role at UEFA on a freelance basis, he was chosen as the best person to head up the new team.

The DFB has continued to work with Sportcast for its Cup competition, says Daub. Previously, prior to the creation of its inhouse broadcast team, Sportcast ran all productions for the DFB.

Notes Daub: We are the host broadcaster for national team matches at ARD and ZDF because they don't want to do that production anymore. So whenever there is a DFB match - a national team match we are the host broadcasters. We still use Sportcast; they are part of the tender. We work directly with TVN for the women's national team matches. We work with Sportcast for the Pokal-Cup. We work with Sky Germany as a host broadcaster in the Women's Bundesliga. We work with DMC for the third league, and we work with a smaller camcorder streaming crew for the youth Bundesliga. So we are busy.

For the opening match of the Frauen Bundesliga on 6 September that saw Bayern Munich Women versus Bayer Leverkusen Women at an almost sold out stadium at the Allianz Arena in Munich, the DFB and its host broadcaster for the Women's Bundesliga, Sky Deutschland, pulled in 16 cameras for the production, including Steadicams, cine style cameras and Google Pixel smartphones

Women's game growth

Frauen Bundesliga the German women's premier league kicked off on 6 September with Bayern Munich Women versus Bayer Leverkusen Women and with an almost sold out stadium at the Allianz Arena in Munich. Those 57,762 spectators made the match the biggest attendance game so far for the women's game in Germany.

The DFB and its host broadcaster for the Women's Bundesliga, Sky Deutschland, pulled in 16 cameras for the production, including Steadicams, cine style cameras and Google Pixel smartphones.

On how the DFB's broadcast division has evolved over the last four years since it was created, and how it is managing its suppliers and helping those divisions grow through broadcast, the Women's Bundesliga is a great illustration, Daub says.

Three years ago we had three or four matches produced in the Women's Bundesliga. The media rights were part of the men's national team deal. [At that time] we said, okay, we need to form a product [for the women's Bundesliga] so we spoke to Deutsche Telekom and we said,

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