Barcelona“We are Bayern, you are not!” The general assembly of Bayern two weeks ago ended like the rosary of the dawn. At times, it sounded like a student strike in the 1960s, with members taking the floor in a chair amid shouts and applause. Most members of the Bavarian club raised their voices against the board’s decision to go ahead with Qatar Airways sponsorship for the first team jersey.
Bayern currently has about 293,000 members. It has long since ceased to be one of the two clubs in the Bavarian capital (for decades less successful than its rival, Munich 1860, now in Third), to become a beloved team throughout Bavaria, Middle Germany and good part of the planet. But many of the club’s Bavarian fans, as is the case at Barça, feel that the club is theirs. And in the ethical debate about what you are willing to do to continue winning in a globalized football in which you compete against the so-called state clubs, those who receive money from Persian Gulf countries such as PSG and City, much of the “We are a club with values. We can’t accept dealings with criminal states,” said Michel Ott, a spokesman for the members. In fact, Ott went so far as to take to court a petition demanding that Bayern include on the agenda of the assembly the vote on whether or not to renew the agreement with Qatar. Justice did not rule him out, but he did manage to vote on a motion that Bayern should commit to being a club that upholds democratic values and against all forms of discrimination. The vast majority of members voted in favor, but the board did not get wet.
On November 6, before the new wave of covid-19s closed the German stadiums again, Bayern fans had already unfurled a giant banner during a match showing two of the club’s visible faces, CEO Herbert Hainer and former player Oliver Kahn, now on the board, washing blood-stained clothes. “For money, we wash everything away,” said the banner, referring to the laundering of the crimes of the state of Qatar in exchange for millions in the trade agreement, which allows Bayern to charge about 20 million a year for advertising that not so much only the main one of the t-shirt. In return, however, the first team usually travels to Qatar to stay there every January, when the German league stops due to the cold. At the assembly in the last week of November, the partners fought to include an item on the agenda to be able to vote to break the agreement with Qatar Airways, in force until 2023. They did not succeed. The assembly ended chaotically, with shouts against the directors, especially against Hainer. Some members who had asked for a floor, seeing that the assembly was closing earlier than planned, made their speeches in the middle of the courtyard of chairs, to applause. “Qatar is guilty of human rights abuses, and there are serious doubts about whether it has corrupted the sport,” said Michel Ott. Based on the work of many NGOs, Bayern fans have recalled that thousands of workers, especially from countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal and India, have lost their lives due to harsh working conditions at the works. “It’s a country where you can go to jail for love, because homosexuality isn’t allowed,” adds Ott, who also talks about the role of women.
The club of ex-players
Bayern, one of the biggest clubs in Europe, is different, as is Barça. First of all, because ex-footballers almost always run there. Until the 1960s, when he was promoted to the Premier League to never be relegated, the club had only one league. But that generation of Beckenbauer, Hoeness, Maier or Müller changed everything. On and off the pitch. For the past 20 years, the club has been chaired by former European champions such as Uli Hoeness, Oliver Kahn, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Franz Beckenbauer. In addition, the Bavarians have found a fairly interesting balance between including large companies in the project and continuing in the hands of the partners. In Germany, all clubs must follow the 50 + 1 rule, according to which at least 51% of the shares of the teams must belong to the members, with some exceptions such as clubs that were already founded by a company, such as Bayer Leverkusen or Wolfsburg, born in the Volkswagen factory. In the case of Bayern, the members control 75% of the club through a company. The remaining 25% is in the hands of three giant multinationals, each with 8.33%: Audi, Adidas and Allianz. All three have one thing in common: Bavarian-born companies. The sportswear brand Adidas was the first to enter the shareholding, in 2002, when it paid 77 million to raise the new stadium, the Allianz Arena, initially shared with Munich 1860, although with the over time Bayern bought their share from their neighbor. In 2009, Audi came in paying 90 million, and in 2014 the insurance company Allianz paid 110 million, money invested to finish returning the debts related to a stadium that the club now controls 100%. And it has already paid off, after inaugurating it before the 2006 World Cup.
In fact, it was Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Uli Hoeness who, in 1998, made a strong commitment at a congress of the German Football Federation in Wiesbaden to change the laws of German football to allow clubs to become partnerships. anonymous. The mix of former footballers and businessmen is also clear on a 9-member Bayern supervisory board, usually former employees or executives of giant companies such as Herbert Hainer (former CEO of Adidas), Dr. Herbert Dies (President of Volkswagen), Werner Zedelius (Allianz), Timotheus Höttges (CEO of Deutsche Telekom) or Michael Diederich of UniCredit Bank.
A sometimes fragile balance between the wildest capitalism and the values of a club with a historically progressive social mass, which has embraced the values of anti-fascism. In fact, Bayern was one of the few clubs that resisted Hitler in the 1930s, as its president, Kurt Landauer, and some executives were Jewish. The most radical fans openly advocate left-wing policies, and have launched campaigns against racism, masculinity and homophobia. “One of Bayern’s first presidents, Angelo Knorr, was arrested for being gay. That’s our history, our values. Do we want to win? Of course. But we want to have values,” Ott said. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who closed the deal with Qatar in 2018, said in an interview: “With rivals like PSG or Manchester City, who receive money from Abu Dhabi and Qatar, with Chelsea in Russian hands and Manchester United in the hands of American millionaires, we need to change. If we don’t make concessions, maybe our football will get smaller. ”
For years, Barça executives from different terms have been looking at Bayern’s model, which mixes private property and the role of members, to see if it was the solution to the club’s problems. The social mass of Bayern, despite belonging to a club that has won more than 50% of the leagues in the last four decades and has tyrannized the championship and signed the players it wanted from rivals, is one of the most socially active in Germany . He has organized guided tours of the Dachau concentration camp near Munich to keep the fight against Nazism alive; he has campaigned against homophobia, raised money for refugees, and actively participated in campaigns against the rise of the far right. Meanwhile, the club’s management was able to leave money to a rival like Borussia Dortmund, as they understood that for their market it was better to have good rivals than to lose that opponent, when Borussia was on the verge of economic bankruptcy. Bayern fans have also starred in incidents in matches against the two clubs who believe they are breaking the tradition of popular ownership in Germany, Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig. The Hoffenheim is owned by Dietmar Hopp, a businessman in the computer industry who, with his money, has brought the club to a Champions League club with just 3,000 inhabitants. RB Leipzig is controlled by the Austrian multinational Red Bull. While Bayern fans criticize this model of entrepreneurs raising projects out of nowhere, without tradition, Bayern hires the computer services company Dietmar Hopp and Franz Beckenbauer advised Red Bull on his landing in German football. Both sides of the same club.
Bayern, a model of success envied by many, is also experiencing an internal conflict in which it is debated whether everything is worth it, in order to continue winning. And the role of partners remains key. The judiciary, in fact, did not allow the motion to be voted on whether to remain members of Qatar because it estimated that the members present at the assembly could not represent a social mass of more than 200,000 people. A case similar to that of the Barça assembly of delegates. In fact, many Bayern partners are calling for electronic voting to be implemented in order to make it clear that they own Bayern. And not the board.
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