Disney plans bid for German soccer rights
10/27/2008
(Bloomberg)
Walt Disney Co., the second-largest U.S. media company, plans to bid for the live pay-TV broadcast rights to Germany's top soccer games and would start a local ESPN sports channel to broadcast the matches, said two people with direct knowledge of the situation. Disney is in talks with German cable companies including Kabel Deutschland GmbH, Kabel Baden-Wuerttemberg GmbH and Unity Media GmbH to distribute a potential German-language ESPN channel for Bundesliga games. Disney owns 80 percent of ESPN.
