The Magic Touch: International Expansion and the Bundesliga

In August, after Bayern Munich won the Audi Cup in China, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the chairman of the club, announced that the Bayern will set up a Chinese office to handle a wide range of businesses and continue to penetrate the high-potential Chinese market.

 Rummenigge announces new plans

 With the same purpose of increasing overseas expansion as Bayern Munich, the Stuttgart soccer club just declared that from January 7th train and prepare for the second half of the season in Cape Town, South Africa--ten thousand kilometers away from Germany. Many people may find it surprising that the club has chosen to set the training camp in such a distant location, and athletes will definitely be tired and uncomfortable because of long-distance flights, different time zones, climate and diet. However, this plan makes sense.



This move will not only let players enjoy sunshine of South Africa in January but also will allow the club to obtain an amount of money awarded by the German Football League (known as DFL, Deutsche Fußball Liga). In order to encourage the club to do more outreach in other countries, the DFL will pay Stuttgart €250 thousand for its winter trip. But in order to get this reward, the club will also have to take part in many local activities. According to the schedule offered by manager Fredi Bobic, besides training and matches, the club will travel to Robben Island to climb mountains. All of these activities in South Africa will be broadcast by Supersports TV station.

Robben Island, 6.9 km west of the coast of Cape Town 

People should get used to this type of overseas trip from German clubs, and in the future we will find an increasing number of trips happening around the globe. All of these actions are geared towards keeping up with the pace set by other leagues like the Premier League to expand overseas markets. During the 1990s, Barcelona, Manchester United and AC Milan started to train and play matches in Asia and America, but fans could hardly find Bundesliga clubs outside of Europe.

“Bundesliga is backward drops behind other leagues as for developing overseas market,” Christian Seifert, a member of the DFL board said. In order to change this situation, DFL has launched a program for clubs: DFL will provide financial aid and extra bonuses to clubs that set up overseas training camps, and some clubs can obtain up to €300 thousand for doing so.

 According to Dr. Jan Lehmann, the director of Strategic Marketing & Product Management of the DFL, there are two important rules for this new program. The first is that eighteen clubs are ranked by UEFA Coefficient (which is based on the results of clubs competing in the five previous seasons of the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League).

This rank is then regarded as its corresponding overseas influence. Because of the different rank, each team can obtain a different bonus. Those clubs with a point total higher than 50 will gain €150 thousand; those clubs with a point total between 25 and 50 will get €100 thousand; the rest of the clubs with fewer that 25 points but more than one point will get €50 thousand.

The table of UEFA Coefficients of German clubs

The second rule for financial aid is about the place which clubs choose to do outreach. For this regulation, DFL lists eleven major markets: China, Russia, America (Canada), Poland, Indonesia, Japan, Turkey, India, Thailand, Brazil and Sub-Saharan Africa (including South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya). If a club whose UEFA Coefficient is higher than 50 sets the training camp in Europe, it will win 150 thousand Euros; if it sets the camp outside Europe, it will gain another 75 thousand.

China is the biggest target for clubs

For example, because of two rules, if Bayern Munich set its training camp in China next summer, it will get more than 300 thousand Euros from DFL. Although this amount of money is not attractive to such a big-spending club, it will motivate many other middle and small clubs, and the trip of Stuggart exactly demonstrates this point. Besides this new program, in order to expand overseas markets, DFL has also tried to develop broadcasting contracts, which will bring the league to a higher level from a global context.

According to new contracts, the revenue from overseas broadcasting of Bundesliga will be increased to 150 million Euros in 2015. Benefiting from all these actions, fans from different countries will have more chances to get involved in Bundesliga. Moreover, because of these mechanisms, more and more small and medium clubs will have greater opportunities to develop themselves, which will gradually break the monopoly of Bayern Munich and Dortmund which dominate the ranking, so a more competitive league will be presented to fans.