AWhen Christian Seifert received the “Sponsors Prize” for his services to the management of the German Football League (DFL) at the Spobis sports business congress on Wednesday evening, it was about more than just recognizing a well-deserved functionary. Seifert is the embodiment of a boom that the Bundesliga has experienced over the past 15 years. That time is over. This can be felt even before Seifert was honored at this congress, where records were celebrated for years.
The pandemic has left deep wounds, but is actually just “the fire accelerator” for many of the current problems, says Eintracht Frankfurt’s board spokesman Axel Hellmann, whose colleague Carsten Schmidt from Hertha BSC adds: “You can’t get away from the robust football of the early 2000s speak. ”The mood is gloomy.
Commercial football has been hit by an “avalanche” that is “getting bigger and bigger”, says Herbert Hainer, President of FC Bayern, and criticizes the tendency to inflate international competitions: “You try to drive out the devil with the Beelzebub: If there is not enough money to make more competition. And more games ”, that is“ the wrong way ”. The Bundesliga is trying to defend itself, but has its own problems. On the first day of the new season, only 2.99 million viewers wanted to see the summaries of the sports show, “where we would normally have five million, that shocked me,” says Hellmann.
The title fight is deserted
Many clubs do not even manage to sell the number of tickets available, which has been significantly reduced due to the pandemic. The fact that more and more popular traditional clubs with Schalke 04, HSV, Werder Bremen, Fortuna Düsseldorf, 1. FC Nürnberg and FC St. Pauli are playing in the second division is a shame for the attractiveness of the premium product.
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The title fight is deserted after nine years with the same champion, the image of the league has deep bumps. “Individual images like gold steaks are sent out, but it’s about a general attitude,” says Schmidt. In doing so, he indirectly raises the question of whether Seifert’s work was not sustainable enough. Especially since old answers come up when looking for solutions: “I do believe that more money is coming in from outside,” says Hainer, referring to possible investor inflows.
This is remarkable, because the Germans are in the process of getting involved in international committees to regulate such payments so that the clubs in England do not keep rushing away. Nobody on the Spobis openly called for the abolition of the 50 + 1 rule. But when it becomes concrete, everyone says that the conditions for external donors need to be improved. It is conceivable that investors will not join the clubs, but rather join the DFL’s weak foreign marketing. But even if 50 + 1 is retained, there is the “possibility”, says Hellmann, “of letting the voting rights and capital shares fall apart”.
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