How will the Bundesliga get exciting again? After ten Bayern championships in a row, this question is now unmistakable. So loud that BVB managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke can no longer hear them. The league “is working great. The only thing that isn’t working right now is the championship fight,” said Watzke on Deutschlandfunk’s sports talk.
Since February he has also been chairman of the supervisory board of the German Football League, i.e. the 36 professional clubs from the 1st and 2nd leagues, and thus also 1st Vice President of the DFB. An accumulation of offices that he did not aspire to. “I certainly have an influence in the DFL and also in the DFB, but I’m not in the driver’s seat.”
In this role, he feels responsible for the strategy of the league. And so in this role, not only from BVB’s point of view, the boredom in the championship fight can of course not be indifferent to him. But Watzke relies on a natural development. Bayern have now played very successfully at the limit for a very long time. “At some point it will crumble, at some point in the next few years it will collapse.”
English Premier League “unreachably rushed”
Intervening in the competition and – as is often requested – reforming the game mode, Watzke considers that to be only the very last step. “I can’t see the time yet. But if the attractiveness of the Bundesliga kept declining over the next five years, and Bayern Munich kept winning, you might have to think about it as a last resort. Now I think it’s too early to dwell on that.”
Overall, Watzke is convinced of the Bundesliga in its current form. If you can make the championship fight tighter again, then it will be the most exciting league ever. A league that at the same time has to fight internationally for connection. The distance to Spain could still be reduced, but the English Premier League is out of reach, said Watzke.
A statement that can also be proven at his club. Because while Liverpool were in second place in the Premier League in the Champions League final, a second Dortmund success after 1997 is unrealistic – although BVB has become runner-up. “To dream of the Champions League final as Borussia Dortmund somewhere between 10th and 15th place in the order of European clubs is a bit presumptuous. This is the same as if the tables-14. or 15th of the Bundesliga dreams of the championship,” says Watzke.
“I was horrified to see what was happening in Newcastle”
Kylian Mbappé’s contract extension in Paris has just shown that the Bundesliga cannot keep up with the sums in international business. For the signature alone, the striker should receive 300 million euros in cash. “Everyone finds it somehow frightening to difficult to bear. Except for the ones in Paris. The fans are cheering.”
This applies even more to clubs that are taken over by states. In no city in the world do they want Saudi Arabia as a club owner until it is their own city, says Watzke: “I saw with great horror what was going on in Newcastle when Saudi Arabia just showed up .” Newcastle fans had celebrated the takeover of their club by a Saudi Arabian state fund with the flag of the country blamed for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, among other things.
On paper, UEFA has been attempting to regulate the flow of money in European football for several years. However, the so-called financial fair play did not ensure that the sums fell – on the contrary. Now UEFA has introduced a new mechanism that could lead to changes, says the BVB boss. Unfortunately, there is a transitional period until 2025. “I can imagine that in one or the other state 300 top-class lawyers are busy trying to push this to the limit.”
Bundesliga needs careers like Lewandowski’s
There is only one way left for the Bundesliga: work even harder and better. Eintracht Frankfurt did it by winning the Europa League. The Bundesliga also has some catching up to do when it comes to marketing the league abroad. While the leagues in Spain and England collect hundreds of millions of euros from broadcasting rights around the world, the Bundesliga is difficult to get to fans in non-German-speaking countries.
Watzke sees several ways to improve this. On the one hand, the Bundesliga must first start telling its stories abroad – even if the competition is fierce. “I also know that the stars are running away from us. Do we have to make new ones? It’s very simple. It’s a very simple principle,” says Watzke, citing Robert Lewandowski as an example. Hardly anyone knew him when he moved from Lech Posen to Borussia Dortmund. Now he is a world star. The league should market such careers better in the future.
Watzke is also convinced that the questions of who the clubs actually belong to and who sponsors them are also becoming more important internationally. The war against Ukraine showed that. “You can see now that the English are slowly getting the hang of it. Because how the British government swept Abramovich out of Chelsea, respect.”
Watzke defends the 50+1 rule
The Bundesliga is way ahead in this area, and the DFL supervisory board chief considers it the most decent and fan-friendly league. This story could also be told and advertised with it. In order to keep it that way, Watzke will continue to defend the 50+1 rule, which prohibits a majority takeover by investors, with great commitment in his new position. “It’s not just a football issue, it’s a social issue. That’s why I also believe that it’s bigger than just economics. It’s also about social cohesion.”
Last but not least, the affordability of the tickets depends on it. However, the Federal Cartel Office is examining the legality of the rule and made it clear in an interim report that the exceptions for company associations such as Leverkusen or Wolfsburg could be in violation of antitrust law. Watzke demands that the rule should not be overturned: “Then the clubs may have to incorporate an opening clause in their corporate structure so that the parent club or former parent club can again participate to a certain extent in the decisions.”
Sustainability as a new major topic in the Bundesliga
He also hopes that further exceptions to the rule will no longer be possible in the future. The league will change one way or another in the coming years. At a general meeting, the professional clubs have just decided to include sustainability in the licensing regulations. The long-term goal according to Watzke: The Bundesliga should become climate-neutral.
The new sustainability criteria are an introduction to this. Watzke defended the decision against criticism that the criteria were not strict enough. In the future, sustainable clubs could also get more money, for example from the distribution of television money. “I don’t want to rule out that teams that excel in this area are given special subsidies or bonuses – it must also be validly measurable.”
In addition to his national offices, Watzke is also on the board of the European top club association ECA and will also represent German football on the Executive Committee of UEFA next year. “Should I come into the UEFA Exko next year – I have to be elected first – then I will withdraw from the ECA, that’s clear,” Watzke announced on Deutschlandfunk. “We can make good suggestions at the ECA, but UEFA makes the decisions. But if you are then one of the few who make these decisions, then you have to seize an opportunity like this.”
Especially since there will be a home European Championship in 2024. And here, too, Hans-Joachim Watzke has fully settled into his new role as a DFB official. “It is important that we make German football shine again. That’s a big issue for the national team, for sure. And that’s why I’m also promoting that we, as the DFB and as a national team, open up more to the fans again.”