ZDF Sport

What is ZDF Sport?

ZDF Sport is the sports output of the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen. ZDF is not a channel within the ARD and is not owned by it. Under §1 of the ZDF-Staatsvertrag, the Länder are the carriers of a non-profit institution under public law bearing the name Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen — die Länder sind Träger der gemeinnützigen Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts mit dem Namen 'Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF)' — seated in Mainz, with a regional studio in each Land; all sixteen Länder are parties to the treaty.^[1] §2 provides that ZDF operates television programmes and offers telemedia in accordance with that treaty and the Medienstaatsvertrag.^[1]

The organisational contrast with the ARD is the point. The ARD is an association formed in 1950 by autonomous regional broadcasting institutions and has nine members today, each constituted under the law of its own Land, with Das Erste supplied jointly.^[7] ZDF is a single institution with one centre. Both are financed from the same household levy, the Rundfunkbeitrag, which the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung gives as €18.36 a month per household, in that form since 2013.^[7]

The version of the ZDF-Staatsvertrag in force is dated 31 August 1991, as amended by the seventh treaty amending media-related state treaties with effect from 26 March 2025.^[1] That is the operative instrument; the 1961 treaty described below is the founding one.

What does ZDF Sport cover?

Sport was part of the remit from the start. The Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund, writing on 3 April 2013 on the fiftieth anniversary of the first transmission, records that the new broadcaster planned twenty to twenty-five hours of sport a month and that ZDF and the ARD agreed to plan their sports programming jointly and distribute it across both channels.^[2] That coordination has persisted in the largest properties.

In football, under the award the Deutsche Fußball Liga announced on 5 December 2024 for the seasons 2025-26 to 2028-29, ZDF holds the second airing of Bundesliga highlights on Saturday evening and the first showing of the Bundesliga top-match highlights.^[6] In Olympic sport, ZDF announced on 16 January 2023 that it and the ARD had secured the German free-to-air rights to the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, the 2030 Winter Games and the 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane, together with the Youth Olympic Games in that period; the rights were sub-licensed from the European Broadcasting Union, which acquired the free-to-air rights from the International Olympic Committee, with Warner Bros. Discovery holding the pay-television rights.^[4]

The programme that carries the weekly sports output is das aktuelle sportstudio, broadcast on Saturday evenings at 22:45. ZDF's own press pack for the programme's sixtieth anniversary in 2023 describes its signature element, the Torwand: a wall 2.70 metres by 1.83 metres with two openings of 55 centimetres, shot at from seven metres, three attempts low and three high. The programme has been produced from Studio 3 on the Mainzer Lerchenberg since 1984, and the ZDF head of sport Yorck Polus is quoted in the same press pack describing it as a guarantor of equally informative and entertaining sports journalism.^[3] That last is ZDF's own characterisation of its own programme.

How large is ZDF Sport's audience?

Media Perspektiven, reporting AGF data in its issue 12/2026 published in May 2026, gave ZDF a full-year 2025 audience share of 14.9 per cent among viewers aged three and over, against 12.7 per cent for Das Erste.^[5] The same analysis recorded that sports viewing in 2025 fell by two percentage points against 2024, and that the most-watched single broadcast of the year in Germany was the women's European Championship semi-final between Germany and Spain, with 14.573 million viewers and a 57 per cent share; across the German women's team's matches at that tournament, average viewing was about 10.1 million with a 47 per cent share.^[5]

For the underlying market, AGF Videoforschung reported on 8 January 2026 that daily television use in Germany in 2025 averaged 158 minutes among people aged three and over, down 7.7 per cent from 171 minutes in 2024, with 43.789 million daily viewers, or 55.5 per cent of that population.^[8]

No separate audited audience figure for das aktuelle sportstudio, and none for the sports pages of the outlet's own website, could be retrieved; the figures above are for the channel and for individual events.

Since when has ZDF Sport existed?

Three dates apply and should not be merged. The founding state treaty took effect on 1 December 1961. The first transmission was on 1 April 1963, from Mainz.^[2] The Staatsvertrag now in force is the separate instrument of 31 August 1991, most recently amended with effect from 26 March 2025.^[1] The Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung dates the establishment of ZDF to 1961, following a Federal Constitutional Court ruling that reserved broadcasting competence to the Länder.^[7]

The sports output is nearly as old as the channel. The Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund records that das aktuelle sportstudio launched in April 1963, in the broadcaster's first weeks.^[2] ZDF's own press pack gives the first broadcast of the programme as 24 August 1963, the year the Bundesliga began, and states that it has run weekly without interruption since.^[3] The two accounts differ on the month and this page carries both; ZDF's is the programme-maker's own dating.

Why does ZDF Sport matter in Germany's sport?

The first reason is constitutional rather than editorial. ZDF exists because the Länder, not the federal government, hold broadcasting competence, and it is carried jointly by all sixteen of them under a state treaty that sets out its legal form and its remit.^[1][7] That makes its sports coverage part of a public mandate financed by a household levy rather than a commercial product, and it is why its figures are reported as audience shares rather than subscriptions.^[7]

The second is the rights position. For the seasons 2025-26 to 2028-29 ZDF holds Bundesliga highlight packages alongside the ARD, and for four consecutive Olympic Games from 2026 to 2032 the two together hold the German free-to-air rights.^[6][4] Events that fall outside the pay market therefore reach German households principally through these two institutions.

The third is durability of format. A Saturday sports programme running weekly since 1963, with a set-piece element unchanged in its dimensions, is a fixed point in the German sporting week, and the 14.9 per cent full-year channel share for 2025 measured by AGF gives the scale at which it sits.^[3][5]