Jamie Vardy Joins Bundesliga as Live Rights Holder

Jamie Vardy has spent a career crashing parties. Now he’s gate-crashing the Bundesliga’s broadcast space.

According to a report from The Athletic’s German football correspondent Seb Stafford-Bloor, the former Leicester City and England striker is now a live rights holder for Germany’s top flight. He is set to begin his new role with coverage of Bayern Munich vs Stuttgart later tonight, stepping straight into one of the marquee fixtures on the calendar.

This is not a traditional move into the studio pundit’s chair. Vardy is joining That’s Football – the digital channel fronted by Mark Goldbridge of The United Stand – to host live watchalongs of Bundesliga matches. In a landscape dominated by Premier League content, it is a deliberate play: take a league that has long admired English audiences from afar and put it in front of them via two of the most recognisable names in the online football space.

For the Bundesliga, it marks another bold step in its marketing strategy. The league has spent years trying to convert casual Premier League viewers in Britain and Ireland into regular Bundesliga watchers. Now it is leaning into personalities rather than traditional broadcasters, giving Vardy and Goldbridge the rights and the freedom to present matches in their own style.

The logic is clear. Vardy brings the credibility of a title-winning No 9 who climbed from non-league to the top of the English game. Goldbridge brings a huge, engaged online audience that lives on watchalongs, instant reactions and running commentary. Put them together on German football nights and you have a very different gateway into Bayern, Borussia Dortmund, Stuttgart and the rest.

Kevin Hatchard, one of the English-language commentators on the Bundesliga’s international feed, has already spoken about Vardy stepping into the watchalong arena, underlining how unusual – and potentially influential – this move could be for the league’s presence in the UK and Ireland.

For Vardy, it is a new chapter. For the Bundesliga, it is a calculated push into enemy territory: the Premier League’s backyard, on Premier League-heavy platforms, with Premier League-built stars front and centre. The question now is simple: can a cult hero of English football persuade British fans to spend their Saturday nights in Munich and Stuttgart instead of Manchester and London?