Although FC Bayern may have lost their eleventh Bundesliga championship in a row last weekend, the club is still considered the figurehead of German football. It was with correspondingly great excitement in Munich that the vote on the hoped-for billion-dollar deal of the DFL turned out on Wednesday. CEO Oliver Kahn was not satisfied with the outcome.
At the meeting of the 36 first and second division clubs in an airport hotel in Frankfurt, a DFL application for the entry of an investor did not receive the required two-thirds majority. Although 20 clubs voted in favor, that was not enough in the end with eleven votes against and five abstentions.
FC Bayern sees enormous risks for competitiveness in this result. “The goal was to strengthen the Bundesliga and the second Bundesliga. With this model, the larger clubs would have shown a lot of solidarity with the smaller ones,” explained CEO Oliver Kahn when asked by dpa: “Now there is a risk that the distance to England and Spain continue to grow and that would be detrimental to all clubs, big and small.”
FC Bayern is the biggest driving force nationally and internationally
The DFL had promised fresh capital of around two billion euros from the entry of an investor. In particular, the money should be used to strengthen the overall marketing of the Bundesliga, primarily abroad. Nationally and internationally, FC Bayern is by far the biggest draw.
If approved, the DFL would have outsourced the national and international media rights to a subsidiary called DFL MediaCo GmbH & Co. KGaA. A potential investor, three of whom were originally interested, was to acquire 12.5 percent of the new company for a period of 20 years.