ECA: Dreesen and Mintzlaff want to be on the board of the powerful club lobby

The club association ECA is the most powerful interest group in European football. With Oliver Kahn and Hans-Joachim Watzke, two officials from the Bundesliga are now vacating their positions on the ECA board. Jan-Christian Dreesen from Bayern Munich and Oliver Mintzlaff from RB Leipzig could follow – but there is strong competition.

Whenever major decisions are made in European football, UEFA has no choice but to turn to the ECA. Whether it’s about the mode of the Champions League and other competitions, the distribution of income or framework conditions such as financial fair play – the ECA has a say that other interest groups such as players’ unions, national leagues or fan associations can only dream of.

The board of directors of the ECA, which is primarily regarded as a lobby organization for the big clubs, recently had three representatives from the Bundesliga:

Two of them will no longer hold office. Kahn automatically lost his ECA post when he was dismissed as CEO of Bayern Munich. After his election to the UEFA Executive Committee, Watzke announced that he would not remain on the ECA board.

Dreesen and Mintzlaff could follow – but there is competition

With Jan-Christian Dreesen from Bayern Munich and Oliver Mintzlaff from RB Leipzig (in the picture at the top), two officials from the Bundesliga are standing for election to the board. The vote will take place at the ECA General Assembly on Thursday (07.09.2023). After moving to the management of Red Bull GmbH, Mintzlaff is only chairman of the supervisory board at RB Leipzig. The ECA statutes actually require candidates to hold office in an executive role or to hold office as a board of directors or president.

Is that an obstacle? The ECA responded to a request from Sportschau that the list of candidates standing for election “in the coming days” will be published. According to information from the sports show, Mintzlaff has so far been on the list of people to be elected, like Dreesen. And that list includes plenty of high-profile competitors like Naples President Aurelio De Laurentiis or Lyon’s US investor Jon Textor.

Only seven of the nine candidates have a seat on the board. It is a partial vote for the currently vacant places that will be available to representatives from the top six countries in the UEFA five-year ranking. The Bundesliga does not have a right to a certain number of people on the board. The ECA board members from the lower regions of the five-year ranking are elected separately. The Executive Board consists of a total of 26 people. Twelve of them come from the top 6 leagues, twelve come from the other countries, plus two female members.

Leverkusen’s Carro does not need an election for the board seat

Bayer Leverkusen’s managing director Fernando Carro is returning to the board without being elected. The statutes stipulate that the board of directors appoints five of its members itself. These board members represent the ECA in a company that the ECA runs jointly with UEFA. One of these five members is Carro. Oliver Kahn also sat in such a seat.

The joint venture “UEFA Club Competitions SA” organizes the marketing of the European Cup. The ECA occupies half of the seats on the board of directors. Officially, the ECA only has an advisory function there, so UEFA holds the decision-making power.

ECA involved in the rights sale of the Champions League and influential in the distribution

However, the participation is seen by many as proof of the great influence of the ECA. Nasser Al-Khelaifi is President of Paris Saint Germain and CEO of the Qatar sports channel “beIN Sports”, which shows the Champions League. He is also ECA chairman and, as such, in 2022 he expressly praised the form of cooperation with UEFA in the tender for TV rights from 2024.

“This process was much more than a call for tenders – it represents a tectonic shift in the clubs’ role in decision-making.” Revenue from UEFA’s three club competitions is expected to increase from €3.5 billion annually to between €4.6 billion and €5 billion from the 2024/25 season. The ECA also has a big say in the question of how the money is distributed. The distribution has been changed in recent years in favor of the top clubs.

This is one of the reasons why smaller clubs have recently formed another body, the Union of European Clubs, which has not yet received official recognition from UEFA.

Frankfurt may take over full member status from Wolfsburg

In the ECA, the Bundesliga, as one of the top 3 leagues in Europe, can nominate five clubs as full members of the ECA. Only these five Bundesliga clubs can send representatives to the ECA Board and only these five have voting rights at the General Assembly.

So far, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen, RB Leipzig and VfL Wolfsburg have been these five members from the Bundesliga. However, Eintracht Frankfurt has meanwhile clearly left VfL Wolfsburg behind in a four-year ranking used by the ECA and can probably hope to be promoted to the status of a full member with voting rights. The “kicker” reported that Frankfurt’s board spokesman Axel Hellmann could take on a special function on the ECA board.

The influence of the top German clubs is also present through another person: Karl-Heinz Rummenigge is Honorary Chairman of the ECA. When not much was left of the ECA bodies when the Super League was founded in 2021 and the ECA had to be occupied in second place in the UEFA Executive Committee alongside Al-Khelaifi at short notice, Rummenigge helped out. He will remain on this board until 2024.