Club World Cup | The little ones are slowly giving up on football

If one area is still resisting the slow decline in reach of linear television , it's sports broadcasts. Favorite shows wait in media libraries for the perfect viewing moment, and new series are often produced directly by streaming platforms like Netflix . But for die-hard sports fans, the live experience remains indispensable.

For this reason, television broadcasters continue to spend billions on broadcast licenses, albeit only for a few sports like football , professional boxing, or tennis, as well as a few major events like the Olympic Games . Representatives of smaller sports associations have almost universally given up even criticizing the unfair treatment. They are content with a niche existence far behind football, which is pushing them even further out of the spotlight with the now immensely expanded Club World Cup .

There are certainly examples of better coexistence: in North America, baseball, American football , basketball , and ice hockey have been almost equally popular with sports fans for decades. Clubs and organizers of the four leagues reach millions of TV viewers every day and generate billions of dollars. In Poland, volleyball has become the second crowd puller after football: the domestic league has long attracted the biggest stars, and the men's national team has won world and European championships several times in the last decade. Hardly anyone in this country, however, noticed that the German volleyball team was unlucky to lose to eventual winners France in the Olympic quarter-finals in Paris by a measly two points.

The streaming platform Dyn was originally intended to bring team sports beyond football into the spotlight in Germany. However, especially in volleyball, it's clear that there's little to it. Cash-strapped clubs usually have to manage the broadcasts of Bundesliga matches themselves, and national team matches, such as the current Nations League, aren't broadcast on television.

Even ARD and ZDF prefer to broadcast third-division football rather than the World Swimming Championships.

If German fans wanted to watch their team, they had to subscribe to the English-language service of the International Volleyball Federation for just under 15 euros a month. Now, in the middle of the season, ZDF is suddenly getting involved in broadcasting the Nations League – via live streams on the internet. The Judo World Championships are also currently underway, but only the World Federation showed them on its website this week.

Part of the problem is so-called sports channels on linear TV. When the volleyball players were competing in exciting matches in Canada, the free-to-air channel Sport1 preferred to show programs like "My Style Rocks" and "Die PS-Profis," while the pay-TV channel Sport1+ broadcast motorsports from Australia and pre-recorded US baseball.

"We would be delighted if volleyball – especially with our national teams – had an even stronger presence on free TV. International competitions like the Nations League or World Championships are a great opportunity to raise the profile of our sport, develop it further, and attract new fans," the German Volleyball Association said in response to an inquiry from nd. "Overall, we see great potential for volleyball in Germany. Therefore, we hope that broadcasters and media companies recognize the opportunity to offer attractive content beyond football with high-class international volleyball."

Instead, the Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund matches will once again be broadcast live on Sat.1 at the Club World Cup in the USA. The Women's European Basketball Championship, which is taking place at the same time, is only available online on the streaming service Magentasport. Naturally, the fan base—and thus the potential audience—is larger in football. But that won't change if the broadcasters maintain their strategy. And: the focus on football will become even greater. Even ARD and ZDF regularly prefer to broadcast third-division football to the World Swimming Championships.

This approach is even a requirement: The Interstate Broadcasting Treaty lists only the Olympic Games and the European Championship, World Cup, DFB Cup, and European Cup football matches under "events of significant social importance." Ingo Weiss, President of the German Basketball Association (DBB), has nevertheless criticized ARD and ZDF several times in recent years for not even the public broadcasters showing interest in the rights to important tournaments for the highly successful German basketball players.

Even though the German Basketball Federation (DBB) is now de-escalating the situation by saying to "nd" that it is "very satisfied with our media partner Magentasport," where the games can be viewed for free, these games mostly only reach basketball fans. Expanding the fan base will therefore be difficult. And the noticeable upswing for women is likely to fizzle out in the media after the European Championships at home, just like the hoped-for boom following Germany's first men's World Cup title almost two years ago.