Breaking: How to watch Bayern Munich will be changing in 2026/27

Bayern Munich fans in the United States will need to update their watch plans — and streaming services — this upcoming season.

As reported in The Athletic, the German Bundesliga has a new $100M deal for broadcasting rights in the United States. The five-year deal takes the Bundesliga away from ESPN and to “a combination of USA Network and Fandango.”

Confused? Yeah, us too. Fandango is known for offering movie tickets and this marks its entry into the live sports scene. And while ESPN carried every single Bundesliga match on its streaming platform ESPN+, matches will now be split across the two platforms:

All 300-plus Bundesliga games will air on either USA or Fandango. USA requires a subscription via cable or another provider, while Fandango does not and is ad-supported. If a game is on USA, it will not be on Fandango and vice versa.

The exact number of matches between the two has not yet been figured out. USA is expected to have at least 30 games, starting with Kane’s Bayern Munich facing Borussia Dortmund in the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup on Aug. 22. During that weekend, USA will air Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea.

This sounds like the Premier League-ification of the U.S. experience of watching Bundesliga matches. That is, any given weekend, you will have to consult some charts to see if the match you want will be carried on a dedicated streaming service or if it will be available via a cable package only.

In short, access to the Bundesliga looks like it will get more sparse and probably more expensive. The ESPN+ deal was a good one, including the 2. Bundesliga as well as LaLiga, and delivered every match — along with replays — in the German top flight for $120 a year (the price of the streaming service is going up to $130, despite the loss of the Bundesliga). Consumers without cable will need to consider shelling out, or missing out.

But is the new deal better for the league and the teams? Also no — it is significantly less money. The Athletic report notes that the previous deal with ESPN, dating to 2020, was for $30M per year. This one is for $20M. By contrast, The Premier League pulls in a reported $450M for its U.S. TV rights alone.

Is it all bad? The Athletic’s reporting actually does not think so. The new deal is said to promise “far greater visibility” than ESPN did, precisely because it is not relegated to streaming. That is, if you already know what you are looking for, it may get harder to find. But if you just happen to have cable, the German top flight will now be on the menu of sports you can browse and happen upon. In the long term, perhaps that is more reach — and furthermore, the Bundesliga’s competitive position may have only eroded in the six years since it struck the ESPN deal. There may not have been anything better, money-wise, on the table.

As The Athletic’s Sebastian Stafford-Bloor explains:

German football did not expect a windfall. Instead, it wanted eyes on its product and the opportunity to expand more organically. Across Versant’s network, it can reach more than 80 million American homes and become discoverable in a way it previously was not.

The landscape is certainly changing— for Bundesliga teams and dedicated fans alike.

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