Bundesliga App relaunched
20 August 2025 – For the start of the 2025-26 Bundesliga season, the DFL has comprehensively re-designed its Bundesliga App, launching the upgrade on 5 August. Numerous market studies, discussions with users, and usage data were evaluated to derive key objectives for further development. The first developer team went into action at the end of November 2024; eventually, a total of four teams were working on the app concurrently.
Five core objectives defined
“We defined five key goals for the development project,” explains Alexander Altenhofen, Director Product & Tech at DFL Digital Sports GmbH. “First and foremost, we decided to provide comprehensive personalisation options enabling every user to customise the app according to their individual interests and preferences.”
The second goal was to ensure a continuous user experience where navigation options are available from any viewed content without users finding themselves at “dead ends”, says Altenhofen. Video content, always especially appealing to users, is given preferential treatment in the new Bundesliga app and is now a core component. “Content Discovery” denotes enhanced search options allowing fans to find desired content more easily. The fifth and final objective was to give app users a more active role within their communities by providing new participatory features, including votings, quizzes, content sharing and other functionalities.
One common code base for both platforms
In mid-July 2025, the developers imposed a “feature freeze”, meaning the status achieved to date was subjected to a three-week testing and launch preparation phase before resuming their development work. A phased roll-out started on 5 August, and since 15 August, the new Bundesliga App has been available to all users, right in time for the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup.
Fans can instantly notice the massive upgrade of the user interface featuring many usability improvements. On the coding side, the app has been fully redesigned, now relying on a unified code base for both platforms (iOS and Android). It makes comprehensive use of AWS technology, including generative AI services and a scalable, secure and efficient infrastructure.
Proven features remain, new ones have been added
Proven, popular standard features of the Bundesliga App, such as the fixture list and table, the Match Center and live ticker, along with statistics, articles and videos continue to be core elements, emphasises Alexander Krey, Head of Product at DFL Digital Sports GmbH. “Then there are numerous new features, such as Match Stories, a largely AI-generated storytelling format on every Bundesliga match. Plus, every fan can define a personal profile including content preferences, and fans can participate in the ‘Bundesliga Man of the Match Vote’ after each game.”
Meanwhile, the development teams have resumed their work: over the coming months, even more new features will be added, says Krey: “Our roadmap lists additional competitions such as the UEFA Champions League and the DFB-Pokal, the introduction of a marketing automation tool, integration of the Fantasy Manager with the Bundesliga App, and other elements, including several features implemented jointly with AWS.”
Successful launch and rising user figures
With just a few days passed since the re-launch of the Bundesliga App, it will be some time until substantial usage statistics are available; nevertheless, the response measured so far clearly indicates that user attention is on the rise, says Krey: “We are observing a roughly 20 per cent increase of the time spent in the app per user, a doubling of video content use, and a more enthusiastic response to our stories – so the general trend is clearly pointing upwards.”