The German Football League has secured an increase in income of more than 50 percent for television rights to the Bundesliga in a four-season deal starting next year.
The deal announced Tuesday starts with the 2013-14 season and runs through to 2016-17. It leaves the main players unchanged, with Sky television keeping the live broadcast rights and ARD public television retaining the highlights rights of Bundesliga matches.
The league, or DFL, said it will bring in about ?2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) in total. That amounts to about ?628 million per year on average, compared with ?412 million per year at the moment.
Sky Deutschland added live broadband Internet television and mobile rights to the live pay TV broadcasting package for the top two divisions it already held, and said it will pay an average ?485.7 million per year.
Shares in the company, in which News Corp. holds a 49.9 percent stake, were 12.7 percent higher at ?2.26 after the announcement.
League chief executive Christian Seifert said the agreement means ''the clubs have more economic room for maneuver than ever before.''
Bayern Munich, Germany's most consistently successful club, also welcomed the agreement.
The increase in income is ''a milestone in the history of the Bundesliga,'' Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said.
He described it as ''the result of the league's very positive development in recent years'' and said it would help make German clubs more competitive in European competition.
