Re: 2023-24 German Bundesliga Discussion Thread
Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2024 2:59 pm
Yeah congrats, the fans saved the bundesliga from growing their 200M in broadcast revenue towards the 2B in revenue the EPL earns. Let's see in the summer if most of Sane/Kimmich/Davies leave for money and titles in the summer like Kroos and Bellingham, or worse to some Newcastle tier team. In a monopoly league like the Buli the failure at the top percolates to the rest of it, and European football is a price taker market so losing viewership in the way the Buli is slated to (-19% or by 190M compared to itself 4 years ago) means the whole league is in decline from its current standing as a tier 3 league. The Buli is becoming the Arsenal of Europe - wonderful cradle for promising talent but not where they stay for their peak years. It's also conspicuous that all the competitive teams in it were probably pro-PE including Leverkusen, BvB, Bayern and that the wording of the suspension explicitly avoided saying the discussion wouldn't conclude at a later time.
Since the quality of fan thought and analysis ignored basic dimensions like (1) why is the DFL looking at fundraising at all now? (2) "what are the alternatives and their consequences?" I'll just leave these here as thought fodder:
https://editorial.uefa.com/resources/028a-1a2f899177e2-b3619612eaa4-1000/uefaeuropeanclubfinanceinvestmentlandscape_150224.pdf
Slides 10-19 tell most of the story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domestic_football_league_broadcast_deals_by_country
Buli has worst broadcast return per top flight team in Europe's big leagues.
https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/private-equity-european-football-dashboard
TL;DR the internal financial sustainability of the league is overrated with the advent of multi-club owners and that fact that most transfers occur across leagues.
The biggest questions remaining from a strategy pov are to what size and at what pace the buli can grow its broadcast market organically or through debt financing.
Since the quality of fan thought and analysis ignored basic dimensions like (1) why is the DFL looking at fundraising at all now? (2) "what are the alternatives and their consequences?" I'll just leave these here as thought fodder:
https://editorial.uefa.com/resources/028a-1a2f899177e2-b3619612eaa4-1000/uefaeuropeanclubfinanceinvestmentlandscape_150224.pdf
Slides 10-19 tell most of the story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domestic_football_league_broadcast_deals_by_country
Buli has worst broadcast return per top flight team in Europe's big leagues.
https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/private-equity-european-football-dashboard
TL;DR the internal financial sustainability of the league is overrated with the advent of multi-club owners and that fact that most transfers occur across leagues.
The biggest questions remaining from a strategy pov are to what size and at what pace the buli can grow its broadcast market organically or through debt financing.