The re-emergence of Bayern Munich among the world's soccer club elite is part of a bigger story. It is a metaphor for the rise of the German Bundesliga it has represented so well in this year's UEFA Champions League.
Off the field, Bayern Munich leads the German Bundesliga in merchandise sales and team sponsorship -- powered largely by its T-Mobile shirt deal. It is second only to Borussia Dortmund in Bundesliga attendance, with crowds of more than 69,000 the norm at Allianz Arena in Munich.
With a league title in sight with the 36th and final round of Bundesliga play this weekend, Bayern Munich appears ready to regain the status it held in the 1970s, both on and off the field.
Yet it does so as part of a Bundesliga that is itself having a banner year. The German Bundesliga is now the number one European league in three of the most important categories of sport business: attendance, merchandising and jersey sponsorship sales.
Driven by a league-wide commitment to family ticket pricing, Bundesliga clubs are averaging around 42,000 fans per game. Powered by lucrative deals in the betting and energy sectors in Germany, Bundesliga shirt sponsorships this year rose by five per cent to a league-wide average of $10 million US (about $2.5 million US per club ahead of the Barclays English Premier League). Merchandise sales have never been stronger.
It is no coincidence to me that the Bundesliga has gained strength each and every year since Germany hosted the 2006 FIFA World Cup. In fact, the growing strength of the league is a direct legacy of that World Cup.
One only has to look at the spike in attendance at World Cup host cities such as Munich, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen (site of the Veltins Arena that is home of Schalke), Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne and Stuttgart over the past five seasons to recognize the impact of 2006. http://www.thesportmarket.biz/podium_news2.htm
It all begins with the new stadiums and stadium renovations that were completed for the World Cup, upgrading the spectator venues in almost half of the Bundesliga's 18 markets. The honeymoon period for those new stadia and renos is still going strong. Yet the resurgence is also reflected in media, television, corporate and fan interest, fueled in large part by the third-place berth of the German national team that year and the first-hand exposure German fans had to the world's best players, more of whom are now playing in the Bundesliga.
Call it the World Cup lift. Four years later, it's still raising the bar for Bayern Munich in particular and the German Bundesliga in general. In some respects, it's shades of the last time the Bundesliga ruled Europe on the strength of Bayern's mid-1970s dynasty. That European champion did its best work in the years after the Munich 1972 Olympics and the 1974 World Cup, which Germany also hosted...and won.
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Among the world's elite football club Bayern Munich's re-emergence of a larger part of the story. It is so good, it represents in this year's Champions League metaphor for the rise of the Bundesliga.
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