Germany: ZDF has a budget of €311 million in 2014 for sport, including the World Cup

The German public broadcaster ZDF has a budget of €311 million for their Sport service in 2014, said the German press, on the 19/11/2013.

€164 million will be spent on three major sporting events in 2014: the Winter Olympics in Sochi (Russia, 07 to 23/02/2014), the 2014 World Cup (Brazil, 12/06 to 13/07/2014) and the European Athletics Championships in Switzerland (from the 12 to 17/08/2014). The remaining €147 million will be spent on other sports programmes.

"These major events being scheduled every four years, we compensate for the additional costs of a given year, by the earnings in other years," said ZDF to the specialist site Digital Fernsehen.de, on the 19/11/2013.

The overall ZDF budget is €2.06 billion for 2014, an increase of €25 million. The sports budget represents 15% of the total. The TV licence fee makes them €1.76 billion, or 85.6% of the overall budget.