Eutelsat reaches German soccer league deal

Arena Sport Rechte und Marketing GmbH and Eutelsat visAvision GmbH, the German subsidiary of Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL), today announced the signature of a three-year agreement to bring all matches of the Fussball-Bundesliga (German Soccer League) live to cable network operators in Germany. The agreement opens the opportunity for Arena to reach cable homes served by network operators who are already partners of Eutelsat’s Kabelkiosk digital programme and service platform which offers 50 German and foreign-language channels.

The more than 100 small to medium-sized cable networks in Germany who are partners of the Kabelkiosk, and who serve two million households, will now be able to offer live access to all 612 matches of the next season of the national Fussball-Bundesliga which kicks off in August. In addition to the Bundesliga package, homes will be able to subscribe to an additional offer of nine entertainment channels which will be proposed in a package called TIVIDI. Eutelsat visAvision’s objective is to add further German-language entertainment channels in the TIVIDI package in order to take the offer to 20 channels. The Bundesliga and TIVIDI packages will be delivered through Eutelsat from its 8 degrees West location which already delivers the Kabelkiosk service. “We are pleased, that with this partnership with Eutelsat visAvision we are in a position to serve the high demand from independent cable network operators and access additional cable customers,” said Christoph Bellmer, Managing Director Technical and Sales of Arena.
“Today’s agreement is an important milestone for Eutelsat visAvision and our KabelKiosk product in Germany. By leveraging its existing business model, which allows cable operators to retain their end-customer relationships, Eutelsat visAvision can now serve compelling Arena programming to its cable partners,” emphasises Volker Steiner, Managing Director of Eutelsat visAvision. “We are very pleased that Eutelsat’s German subsidiary has won the confidence of Arena to offer live German Soccer League matches to German
cable homes from our 8 degrees West position,” said Giuliano Berretta, Eutelsat CEO. “This new contract is fully in line with our strategy to develop new premium video neighbourhoods, including at 7/8 degrees West, in addition to our existing premium HOT BIRD(TM) and EUROBIRD(TM) 1 neighbourhoods.” More than 100 cable network operators already partner with Eutelsat’s KabelKiosk, to offer their own digital packages to their customers. All KabelKiosk channels are encrypted in Conax. The TIVIDI package will also be encrypted in Conax so that existing Kabelkiosk customers will not need to
change their existing decoders.

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