Germany's two prominent public service broadcasters ARD and ZDF have extended their rights to broadcast the country's women's and men's national teams’ soccer teams until 2027 and 2028 respectively.

The joint sports rights agency of ARD and ZDF, SportA, first reached an agreement with the DFB to acquire exclusive media rights to all women's international matches until 2027.

SportA then agreed with European soccer's governing body UEFA, on behalf of ARD and ZDF, the acquisition of exclusive media rights to the men's international matches until 2028.

The women’s rights package includes the new UEFA Women's Nations League and the qualifying and preparatory games for both UEFA Euro 2025 and the FIFA World Cup 2027.

The agreement with UEFA on international matches for the men’s team, meanwhile, includes 30 fixtures, covering the Nations League, as well as preparatory and qualifying games for Euro 2024, the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and Euro 2028.

The rights cover live broadcasts as well as replays of matches and distribution across all channels.

Norbert Himmler, ZDF director, said: “Games by the German national teams, both men and women, will continue to be reliably broadcast on ARD and ZDF in the coming years.

“Beyond the 2024 European Championship, we can now signal to our viewers that games of the German national teams, both men and women, will continue to be reliably present on ARD and ZDF in the coming years.

“We look forward to the broadcasts of the games and will offer our audience a diverse program with live games, analysis, and interesting conversations in the usual high journalistic quality."

ARD sports rights director Tom Buhrow added: "I am very pleased that international matches of the German national team - women's and men's - will continue to be shown on ARD and ZDF in the future. Our audience can rely on us to cover sporting events as usual in a journalistic way."

During the previous rights cycle, ARD and ZDF split rights to German fixtures outside the major tournaments with commercial broadcaster RTL.

Earlier this year, Dyn Media, the new sports streaming platform headed up by former DFL German soccer head Christian Seifert, entered into an extensive four-year sub-licensing agreement with ARD and ZDF.

The deal will see ARD and ZDF show live action from the sports properties with which Dyn has struck deals. These cover top-tier action in basketball, handball, and table tennis.