AAt first glance, no major changes are to be expected when the representatives of the 36 men’s clubs in the first and second Bundesliga meet on Wednesday at the General Assembly of the German Football League (DFL) to elect their management bodies. Holger Schwiewagner (Greuther Fürth) will probably follow Rüdiger Fritsch (Darmstadt) in the nine-member executive committee, and Axel Hellmann, spokesman for the board of Eintracht Frankfurt, is to replace Alexander Wehrle (formerly Cologne, now Stuttgart) as a representative of the “medium-sized clubs”.
The move is viewed with some unease by some clubs as Hellmann will find himself at a point where the bridge from the big Champions League clubs to the rest of the leagues and back needs to be bridged. To put it simply, four representatives of the top clubs face each other in the presidency on many issues.
Hellmann would take the position between the factions, over which majorities can arise. There is concern that the 51-year-old from Frankfurt will, if in doubt, tend towards the big ones with their growth and commercialization efforts, which are making the competition increasingly unequal. A concern that is reinforced because Hellmann is acting as a leading member of a working group on the possible entry of an investor into the DFL.
Bundesliga like movies on Netflix
The sale of around 20 percent of a still to be founded sports rights marketing subsidiary of the DFL, through which the business of foreign marketing is to be operated, could bring in up to four billion euros. These funds are then to be invested in the digitization process, which is seen as a key growth area in German professional football. Live football over 90 minutes will “no longer be the format of the future”, says Hellmann in an interview in “Kicker”, the reporting will be “smaller” and “played on more diverse platforms”.
Similar to how films can be accessed via the Netflix portal, the audience could use a Bundesliga app to watch games, highlights, expert panels and clips of all kinds – depending on the market and content, for a fee or free to receive. In a first step, such a product, the development of which, according to Hellmann, would cost a three-digit million amount, could be offered on the international markets where marketing had recently faltered.
This is one of the core competencies of DFL Managing Director Donata Hopfen, who has been Christian Seifert’s successor since the beginning of the year. Not everyone in the industry is now sure whether it was the right decision to give the 46-year-old digitization expert all the power that Seifert had acquired over the years. With her thoughts on playoff games and a possible relocation of the DFL Supercup to the Middle East, she caused public discussions.
There is also criticism internally, with a convincing performance in Dortmund, she could regain a lot of trust. One of the reasons for resentment is that the working group headed by Hopfen on the investor project has so far been largely in secret. Only a few of the 36 professional clubs are involved in the processes, although in the end all will be affected. The information needs of the less well-connected shareholders could be satisfied at least in part in Dortmund.
The elections of the supervisory board, which hires the members of the DFL management board and, on Seifert’s recommendation, also gave hops their contract, have received more attention than ever before. Since then, it has been clear to everyone how important this body can be – for example, if structural changes become necessary when an investor enters the company and new positions have to be filled.
It is controversial, for example, that with Fredi Bobic a man from the sport will be elected to the supervisory board, who recently positioned himself more as a representative of commercial interests and against the concerns of the big fan scenes. A future without the 50+1 rule does not scare him very much. He doesn’t think “that we would then lose our football culture and the members would have nothing more to say, or ticket prices would explode or the club colors would change,” he told Sportbild magazine. 50+1 is an unsolved problem for the DFL. The cartel office has basically declared the rule to be legally compliant, but combined with the requirement that no exceptions are permitted for Leverkusen, Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim.
