The DFL is divided after the failed investor deal. The new leadership duo calls for unity but has no time to promote it. Instead, it wants to tackle the most urgent projects as quickly as possible.
About 45 of the now more than 84 million people living in Germany are interested in football and thus also in the Bundesliga. Market research has shown that, said Dr. Steffen Merkel, who is now known to far more football fans than just over a month ago. But it will still only be a fraction of the 45 million, because Merkel is one of two new managing directors of the German Football League (DFL) who have so far acted from the second row.
The other is also a doctor, he is also 37 years old and his name is Marc Lenz. “We were both brought into the house by Christian Seifert, encouraged and challenged by him,” said Lenz. He was just as little the first choice as Merkel. But there were some refusals for the powerful chairman of the supervisory board, Hans-Joachim Watzke, including from Axel Hellmann (Eintracht Frankfurt) and Oliver Leki (SC Freiburg), who had managed the business on an interim basis after the crashing failure of Donata Hopfen.
Decrease in sales of national rights expected
Seifert was also only known to a few in the football industry when he became managing director of the DFL in 2005, the umbrella organization of the 36 football clubs and other constructs from the Bundesliga and 2nd division. When Seifert left the DFL in 2021, he had led it through the most difficult months of the pandemic and had previously turned it into a prosperous business enterprise. DFL recorded an increase of more than 80 percent in the sale of media rights in 2016.
Such increases are utopian for the upcoming tender. Industry insiders such as Marcus Höfl, who is also a consultant to Franz Beckenbauer, even expect a drop of up to 15 percent in the sale of national rights. “It’s not the easiest market environment for the tender,” said Lenz on Thursday (July 6th, 2023) at the Frankfurt headquarters of the DFL, when he and Merkel introduced themselves to a group of journalists “on day four of our term of office”.
From “day one” it was clear that the new management would not have “a long warm-up phase”. “It takes quick action,” said Lenz, who has been with the DFL since 2019, previously with the European Football Association UEFA and a large management consultancy. The tender for the media rights has priority, it should be completed before the 2024 European Championship. “The results are incredibly important for the clubs,” said Merkel, also previously a management consultant and with the DFL since 2014, “with effects that may continue into the next decade.”
No to investor entry make calculations more difficult
Club calculations have become more difficult since a process involving the new duo was halted on May 24. The participation of a private equity company was supposed to bring in up to two billion euros, but the majority of votes required for the process to continue was missed.
Before, during and also after the decisive meeting, a lot broke up in the community of convenience, from which some want to win the Champions League, others to stay up in the 2nd division. There was even talk of a split, but that’s not an option for the new leadership. She called for unity, but will not start a tour in the coming weeks to promote it to the individual clubs. There simply isn’t enough time for that.
digitalization and internationalization
Lenz and Merkel want to tackle it, want to redesign some things, and also want to hire new staff. They want to know exactly what the Bundesliga fan looks like. How old he is, how he looks, when he looks. They want to get the data from these fans in order to be more targeted and ultimately sell.
Digitization and internationalization were the core goals for planning with an investor, and they remain so without. The DFL wants – now really – into the future without overturning important pillars of the past.
Everything, Lenz assured, will happen while maintaining the 50+1 rule that secures the power of the parent clubs.
More money for the DFL, less for the clubs
The business model of the DFL should be further developed. Central to this is the development of a digital platform through which content is to be sold, ultimately the football games. The customer would then pay directly to the DFL and no longer to broadcasters and companies that previously acquired the rights from the umbrella organization.
“We will definitely tackle that,” said Merkel about the platform, for the development of which hundreds of millions of euros were to be collected by the investor. Now it has to be “internally financed”, according to Lenz. The DFL wants to retain more money from the sale of rights and distribute less to the clubs.
This should lead to discussions that could make Marc Lenz and Steffen Merkel better known to the general public.