Bundesliga presents global growth strategy

CEO Christian Seifert has presented the Bundesliga’s global growth strategy at the “Leaders Sport Business Summit” in New York.

For the Bundesliga to continue to hold a leading position in a rapidly-changing media market, it is launching a comprehensive innovation and growth offensive. This focuses firstly on further expanding German professional football’s leading role with regard to technology-related and media-related expertise and secondly on offering all-encompassing solutions to the contractual partners worldwide in the digital age. With its proven unique selling propositions (including top players at national and international level, the highly-promising young professionals, a unique stadium atmosphere, the most inexpensive ticket-prices, the highest average number of spectators in all football leagues, and the most goals among all the top leagues) the Bundesliga thereby commands a unique overall product offering, also compared to its competitors.

“The aim in being a leader in innovation and technology is not only to drive forward our own growth but also to think in terms of solutions for the challenges faced by our partners. Our all-embracing approach covers a media company’s entire value-chain – from the design of the licensing packages, via the broadcasting technology, right through to special formats and accompanying marketing measures, spanning across all media channels. This is a unique proposition that we want to build upon. Long-term, the only league to enjoy success will be the one offering a high-calibre competition, a distinctive character of its own and top-level media competence, in equal measure,” says Bundesliga CEO Christian Seifert.

The Bundesliga has been investing since 2006, initially in the build-up of its service infrastructure, with its subsidiary companies Sportcast (host broadcaster) and DFL Digital Sports (production and distribution of digital content). The Bundesliga also has the world’s largest digital football archive, making into its distinctive corporate hallmark the quality of the base signal, with the highest standards of a top national league worldwide (including use of the spidercam since 2007, Free D 360-degree action-replays, and Hawkeye goal-line technology since 2015). Starting next season, the Bundesliga will be the first of the top leagues to deploy the video assistant referee for all games, as part of a pilot project. Use of UHD-HDR technology is currently being tested, as are robotic cameras.

To establish an even greater closeness to the markets, the Bundesliga’s international sales and marketing activities will be brought together into a single unit. “Bundesliga International GmbH,” which will subsume the current organisation, DFL Sports Enterprises, will establish additional organisational units abroad, among other tasks, as well as strengthening the global marketing, built around the claim “Football as it’s meant to be”. Also in this context, the ‘Legends Network’ of the Bundesliga is set to be launched in the near future, featuring stars such as Lothar Matthäus, Jens Lehmann, Paulo Sérgio and Pavel Pardo as brand ambassadors. Simultaneously, DFL Digital Sports will intensify its content-marketing activities on a target-market-specific basis, coordinating this with ‘Bundesliga International’.

In addition, Sportec Solutions GmbH was newly founded – a joint-venture that brings together Sportcast, the Bundesliga’s subsidiary, with the renowned data-services provider, Deltatre; with its optimum processing of data from games, this venture will in the future put into place a further building-block in the Bundesliga’s all-embracing product offering.