Under pressure: TVN CEO Markus Osthaus considers the German sports broadcasting market

Technical services provider, TVN, works with the DFL’s production arm, Sportcast, to bring the Bundesliga to viewers. Pictured is the Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany, during the Champions League Final 2025

The German outside broadcast market is working in a fragmented live sports arena, where cost effectiveness battles daily with the need to bring in new angles and more cutting edge technologies to satisfy clients.

German OB technical services provider, TVN, is the largest OB firm in its home market. It focuses almost exclusively on premium productions, but thanks to a new push on remote production – in which it is leading Germany – it is in the process of creating new opportunities that will hopefully see it circumnavigate the argument for producing more with less.

Under pressure

Price pressure on productions is always an issue in live sports broadcast, says TVN CEO, Markus Osthaus. “There are a lot of productions which are under pressure, which are sometimes even not produced anymore in the usual way,” Osthaus says, referring to productions opting for lower cost tech solutions due to increasing efficiency pressures.

“They’re getting more low cost technology; they’re streaming with semi-professional equipment. There’s a lot of pressure in the market. And on the other hand, the demands with regard to premium production are also growing and the customers want to have other camera angles; they want to have more wireless cameras, they want to have drones, they want to have bus cameras that are RF-based and all that kind of stuff. The productions get more complex, get more demanding. And you always have to think about new ways of production, how you can do it, as well as be more cost efficient.

“You always have to find the niche where you fit in; 10 years ago, we decided that we see ourselves as the premium OB provider [in Germany], and that has worked out pretty well.”

On whether the market will stabilise, Osthaus laughs and says, “when was our market ever stable?” He continues: “There were always a lot of changes. Of course, in Germany a new rights period just started in the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2, so a lot of things are changing. The standard productions get a little bit smaller, while the premium productions – the premium match of the match day in Germany is the so-called ‘Top Plus’ production – are growing more and more; this is regarding the camera standard, the audio demands, and the special cameras.”

TVN has worked alongside the Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL) and its host broadcast production company, Sportcast, for many years on Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2. This year is is taking some match productions for Bundesliga 2 remote for the first time

Fragmenting and consolidating

On trends shaping the German outside broadcast live sports business going forwards, Osthaus says the market in Germany is fragmenting and consolidating simultaneously, which makes it hard to tell what will happen next.

He says: “I think in these times it’s really hard to predict the future. It’s so unsure, in my opinion. The media business has a lot going on; RTL just acquired Sky Germany, MediaForEurope (MFE), formerly Mediaset, is increasing its share of ProSiebenSat.1, so there are a lot of things going on, and of course we need the feedback from the customers on what they’re up to. Generally speaking, I see the market splitting up stronger. And of course, Sky and RTL are both customers of TVN and I’m really curious what will happen with that merger.”

A trend that has taken a downturn in Germany is sustainability. Osthaus says the sustainability issue – always something that is raised by others looking at OB production – has tailed off somewhat. He explains: “We worked a lot on the issue of sustainability. But to be honest, somebody has to pay it. And when you want to do a production as a green production, you have more costs; you have more costs for sustainable hotels, you have more costs for travelling because you are only allowed to use certain cars and so on.

“Two years ago, companies like RTL and Sky were really on that issue. But now I think it’s a little bit less, because the market is experiencing so much movement, it’s a little bit out of sight. We are still working on it. We are still thinking about what can we do regarding our trucks, what can we do about hotels? Because the main carbon footprint issue on an outside broadcast production is travelling and hotels. So, we are always looking into it and thinking about what we can do better, but the demand from the customer side is not as high as it was two years ago. But I am convinced that it is still in everybody’s interest to work on this issue to make TV productions more sustainable,” he says.

“Production budgets are going down,” he continues. “I think a lot of companies right now are under pressure. They are reconfiguring their business models. They don’t know exactly where they’re heading in the next one or two years. I think there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market. And of course, when you can predict the future, you can say, “what money do I have to spend and what is not absolutely necessary?”

Yet TVN is continuing to grow. On top of its new trucks and remote solutions, TVN has employed more staff. Osthaus concludes: “We also employed more people, because it’s all about the people. The technology can be bought by everybody, but at TVN, we are always saying that the team is the thing that makes a difference; how they operate at the venue and how they operate with customers. In the live production area alone, we have about 200 people fully employed now.”

TVN’s Ü7 OB van in Winterberg for the Snowboard World Cup in March 2024