Live from the Supercup: DFL signals intent to become best league in the world on and off the pitch

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After proclaiming how exciting the Bundesliga product was on the pitch – including that it averages more goals per game (3.1) than any league in Europe – DFL executives were delighted but not perhaps surprised when last weekend’s German Supercup lived up to the occasion. The regular German soccer season opener, played this time between last year’s unbeaten champions Bayer 04 Leverkusen and runners up VfB Stuttgart, produced a four-goal thriller including a red card, an 88th-minute equaliser and a win on penalties for Leverkusen in front of an exhilarated crowd at the BayArena on 17 August.

The Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL) knows that its sporting product is good, but in order to grow it needs to sell the league to fans and by extension distribute media rights around the world, which is where tech innovation plays a centre role.

“Right now we have a very compelling and positive attitude towards German professional football and the Bundesliga in particular. For me, this is not just a feeling or an opinion but an observation that I can back up with facts,” said Steffen Merkel, DFL CEO.  “It is very important that we remain an organisation that recognises new technology, that remains curious, and always puts ourselves into the shoes of the fan to rekindle their fascination for the Bundesliga every day.”

Although he didn’t quite spell it out, Merkel and the DFL have a long-term ambition to usurp the English Premier League as the most successful league in Europe.  A recent report by Deloitte put the Bundesliga second, leapfrogging La Liga and behind the EFL in the elite of European leagues based on revenue.

In figures released in March, the DFL posted a record total revenue of €5.24 billion for the 2022-23 season (across Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2), 9% higher than the previous mark from 2018-19.

The core of the product continues to be “spectacular football and about excitement and about goals”, he said, noting that over the past five years the Bundesliga “has been consistently the league which scored the most goals and with the fewest goalless games.”

Coupled with this is stadium atmosphere. The DFL has sold more than 22 million tickets for the Bundasliga 1 and Bundasliga 2 combined. “That’s an all-time record and takes us even above pre-pandemic levels,” Merkel said.

The average attendance of games last year across both leagues was 29,000 per game, which is on par with Spain’s La Liga and Italy’s Serie A “always with sustainable and stable ticket prices that continue to be a strong characteristic also of German professional football”, he said.

“Every weekend, 400,000 people come to the stadiums, but domestically more than 15 million viewers are following our games over the weekend.”

He said that Bundesliga annual revenue had grown, on average, 7% a year over the past few years, making it the second fastest growing league after the English Premier League. “In sum, the Bundesliga is on the rise but to be very clear that’s not the point where we want to end. This is only the start of our key ambition to grow and even speed up the momentum of growth. We have ambitious goals as an organisation,” he added.

Of the €5.24 billion total revenue in 2022-23 media brought in €1.52 billion or 34% of the total, which is why the DFL is pursuing “an internationalisation offensive” to market the TV product overseas.

Bundesliga International chief marketing officer Peer Naubert has led more than 1,000 international activations this past year, which he said was considerably more than any other European league. “We are not the Premier League, we are the challenger,” he said, “and this is why we need to be more aggressive and more innovative to grow our business.”

The position of its domestic TV rights is muddied just now with DAZN, one of the incumbent holders, taking DFL into arbitration in a dispute over allocation of the next set of rights beginning 2025-26. DAZN believes it has lost out to Sky Deutschland and claims the bidding process was unfair.

“Did we want arbitration? Of course not, but it is also a sign of the popularity of the Bundesliga that broadcasters are fighting very hard to get the packages,” Merkel said.

Another option, in common with reports circulating about the EPL, is to take control of the rights inhouse and go direct to fans with a Netflix-style service.  With the production capacity already run by inhouse division Sportcast it’s clearly possible, but Merkel said the time was not right.

“The technical ingredients which we have for producing broadcast pictures at the DFL are probably better than at any of our colleagues but this is not just a production-related decision, in the first place it is a commercial decision. That’s more difficult to analyse. We want to optimise our media rights sales because it accounts for a significant proportion of the revenues on our books,” he added.

He pointed to the importance of digital platforms and AI to reach and engage younger generations and overseas fans.

“So many fans of the Bundesliga domestically and especially internationally have their first touch points with us in the digital and social media space. Having a presence there is so crucial. Our goal in our target markets is that you cannot avoid the Bundesliga. So, if fans choose in the end not to follow a club or not to engage with the league, fair enough, but at least we can present them with the choice. Of course, media consumption in the live space is still the focus and the key, but consumption has become more scattered and more localised that’s why we see technology innovation as the future of broadcast at the Bundesliga.”