Imagine if the Super Bowl had to be renamed at short notice – and the final of the National Football League (NFL) would suddenly be called the NFL Bowl. What seems unthinkable in the US professional league actually happened in the German Football League (GFL). The reason is a legal dispute between the current and former leadership of the German American Football Association AFVD.
The former executive committee had transferred the hosting rights for the final of the German championship to the company German Football Service, which the then AFVD president Robert Huber is still the managing director to this day. According to the new AFVD leadership, it was initially agreed that Huber’s company would pay out 50,000 euros to the AFVD for each final. But before Huber’s executive committee resigned in November 2022, the contract was changed so that the AFVD waived this guaranteed sum.
The new AFVD leadership then terminated the contracts with Huber’s company – they were concluded unlawfully and would burden the association long into the future. Huber, in turn, sued against this termination; he considers the contracts to be standard practice in the industry. According to the new AFVD president Fuat Merdanovic, there is no imminent end to the legal dispute in sight: “There will be no new court date before the end of the year.”
The Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns and the Potsdam Royals did not face each other in the German Bowl, but in the GFL Bowl
That’s why last Saturday the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns and the Potsdam Royals faced each other in the championship final not in the German Bowl, but in the GFL Bowl. AFVD President Merdanovic doesn’t know whether the 2024 final will have its original name again. That depends on how the process goes: “We want the brand back and will fight for it.” Financially, this is of great importance, says Merdanovic. “As long as we as an association do not have access to the income from the German Bowl, we will be paralyzed.”
Because of the legal dispute, the final was not held in the Frankfurt Eintracht football stadium, as previously agreed by Huber’s executive committee, but in the Essen stadium on Hafenstrasse. The favorite from Potsdam beat Schwäbisch Hall 34:7 in front of 9,500 spectators.
For comparison: 31,500 spectators came to the final of the European League of Football (ELF) in neighboring Duisburg at the end of September. The ELF is a semi-professional European football league that was only founded at the end of 2020. The GFL, formerly the Football Bundesliga, has existed since 1979.
The ELF currently includes 17 teams from nine European countries. With seven teams, Germany has the most of all nations. The ELF is divided into three divisions: Western, Central and Eastern Europe. The previous champions are Frankfurt Galaxy, Vienna Vikings and Rhein Fire. The GFL is currently home to 15 teams. These are divided into two groups: the north and the south of Germany. The record champions are the New York Lions Braunschweig with 15 titles. The Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns have dominated the south for years.
There are currently two cities in Germany where the competition between GFL and ELF is particularly fierce: Munich and Berlin. Both cities have both a GFL and an ELF team. In the GFL the Munich Cowboys represent the Bavarian capital, in the ELF the Munich Ravens. The two teams not only take players from Munich and the region away from each other, but also the fans.
On average, more than 5,000 fans came to the Munich Ravens’ home games
In the regular season in 2023, an average of around 4,000 spectators came to the ELF games, and around 1,500 for GFL games. This means that the ELF has overtaken the GFL after just three seasons. And that despite the fact that the GFL was also able to increase its average audience by around fifteen percent compared to the previous year.
For its board member Axel Streich, the fact that the ELF attracts more fans to the stadium than the GFL has to do with NFL Europe, a former European branch of the NFL: “The ELF has a lot of spectators in the cities that were formerly NFL Europe locations and where a fan base still exists from back then.” There are also teams in the ELF without an NFL Europe past that still raise the average attendance. For example, the Munich Ravens, whose home games at Sportpark Unterhaching attracted an average of more than 5,000 fans.
With a view to the GFL’s lower viewer numbers, Streich also points to the lower advertising budget: “As an amateur league, we cannot invest in the same media and advertising effort as a professional league with investors like the ELF.”
Open detailed view
Competition in the city: The ELF club Munich Ravens, here in a league game against the Barcelona Dragons, is taking spectators away from the GFL club Munich Cowboys.
(Photo: Heike Feiner/Eibner/Imago)
Before the past season, many players again moved from the GFL to the ELF – the compensation there is higher. A particularly blatant example: the ELF club Stuttgart Surge. The team remained without a win in 2022 and therefore hired the coaching staff of the then GFL champions from Schwäbisch Hall for the 2023 season. A double-digit number of Unicorns players then joined the Surge in nearby Stuttgart. They promptly made it to the ELF final (which they lost to Rhein Fire from Düsseldorf).
“There has also been a case where a player didn’t show up for training and was in the ELF the next day,” says Holger Fricke, team manager of the New York Lions Braunschweig from the GFL. Since the ELF does not belong to any association, it is not bound to any change periods. To ensure that such bloodletting is no longer possible, even during playing times, there are discussions between the association and the ELF. “Nothing has been decided yet, but I think the negotiations will be concluded shortly,” hopes Fuat Merdanovic.
Compensation payments to the training clubs? The ELF is currently not prepared to do this
However, there is no agreement in sight on another controversial issue, namely possible compensation payments. Currently, GFL clubs do not receive anything in return when a player they have trained moves to an ELF team. “At the moment there is no apparent willingness at ELF to make compensation payments,” says Axel Streich. It is only the GFL clubs that are involved in youth work.
Streich believes it is right that the new AFVD leadership talks to those responsible for the ELF. The old presidium had rejected this dialogue. The fact that there is something of a spirit of optimism at the GFL despite all the problems is mainly due to the association’s new executive board.
However, collaboration between GFL and ELF is currently not an issue. “The basic prerequisite for this would be that there is an advantage for our clubs,” says GFL man Streich: “At the moment, the existence of the ELF only has disadvantages for us.” Merdanovic, in turn, warns against spending too much time with the ELF. There is “enough to do” in German football, we shouldn’t work on the ELF, says the AFVD president.
