2023-24 German Bundesliga Discussion Thread

[SgtPepper]

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.

[Baphomet]

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.

I'm loving the random strays Newcastle keep catching in your posts.

[Foye]

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.

There are other options of fundraising rather than selling a percentage of future tv-money for 20 years.
That is a business model for Barcelona. Not sustainable.

Also, Bundesliga needs to remain affordable for the fans.
And nobody wants to have Monday night games again only to get a bit more tv money.

[Foye]

Kroos is returning to the NT by the way.

Doubt it will be a success story.

Kroos and Kimmich
or
Kroos and Gündogan + Kimmich RB

Any of those options will be a disaster defensively.

[SgtPepper]

Agree on Kroos, as for the rest this board and general football fandom are too dumb to talk with. I'll save that for my business strategy communities in the biannual circumstances they talk sports and football businesses. The probable next steps will likely be club level pe fundraising which will be way worse for the buli than the structured raise idea since the bottom 14 teams are going to get nothing. Also that response was so lazy. You have no concrete alternatives brought to the table, and didn't even tie 1+1 in noticing how the last 2 years of Bayern mismanagement tie directly into the fundraising motivation now. It's disappointing as you were the only person here who expressed basic literacy about corporate investment.

[Foye]

Agree on Kroos, as for the rest this board and general football fandom are too dumb to talk with. I'll save that for my business strategy communities in the biannual circumstances they talk sports and football businesses. The probable next steps will likely be club level pe fundraising which will be way worse for the buli than the structured raise idea since the bottom 14 teams are going to get nothing. Also that response was so lazy. You have no concrete alternatives brought to the table, and didn't even tie 1+1 in noticing how the last 2 years of Bayern mismanagement tie directly into the fundraising motivation now. It's disappointing as you were the only person here who expressed basic literacy about corporate investment.

I don't get paid to bring alternatives to the table.
Why would I care?

Without the bottom 14 teams, Bayern and Dortmund won't get tv money either. Well maybe they can buy into Florentino Perez Super League.
Any individual fundraising solution will be boycotted by the fans, too. Guaranteed.

Bundesliga tv money 23/24:
https://football-finance.com/1-bundesliga-tv-revenue-distribution/
There is no parity in a league where the first is getting 3x the money the last one is getting.

Compare that to EPL:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/240912/broadcasting-payments-to-clubs-in-the-english-premier-league/
City is getting about 1.5x the money from deadlast. Much better distribution.
As a result the league is much more competitive.

The solution to the mess Bundesliga has created is to distribute the existing tv money in a better way.
That way: Bottom teams will improve. There will be more competitive and less boring games. Bottom teams will have more funds available to keep their players rather than selling them to the top teams. Even if the overall tv money is going down temporarily - top teams will have less money to buy bottom teams players. Which is a short-term win as well for competition.
More competitive games = more interest in the league both nationally and internationally = more tv revenue for everyone long-term.
Of course that won't happen, though, because DFL is dominated by top teams officials like Dortmund and Frankfurt.
Lets be honest: If Bayern lose 15mil. in annual tv revenue they flat out won't notice. They are not even getting a leg of Harry Kane for that amount. If any of the newly promoted teams get just 5 mil. more in tv revenue that would usually go to the top that is already a significant improvement.

The fact that we have to talk about selling future tv money basically to do nothing more than create a streaming platform and cement the existing status quo itself is depressing. Then in two years we will talk again about playing games on Monday evening or playing in Saudi Arabia to acquire the maximum amount of oil money possible like it is already common practice in Spain. And in 5 years we will talk about how we didn't sell enough % of our tv money and we need to sell more to get another short-term boost. Similar to Barcelona. Clubs will spend it on players rather than infrastructure.
Players wages increase and the money is gone sooner than later while the tv money is trending down given that you sold even more percent of your future tv money. Eventually, we will see clubs go bankrupt from it and more newly created pointless investor clubs like RB Leipzig and Hoffenheim make it to the league further reducing the interest from the national tv audience in Germany because nobody cares about these clubs.
Selling future tv money is not a sustainable business model.

Of course, a Real Madrid fan is only focused on maximizing money for the top clubs, though.

The existing tv deal is bad for the overall competition in the league. There is no other way to frame it.
Selling future tv revenues won't make it better. In fact, it will make it worse.

[magik9113]

Agree on Kroos, as for the rest this board...

you can save your insults for your business strategy communities as well

[Shaazzam]

lol why so mean pepper?

anyhoo, Davies to Real Madrid

[Foye]

Agree on Kroos, as for the rest this board...

you can save your insults for your business strategy communities as well

Must be Florentino Perez himself trying to educate us poor RealGM users.

[Foye]

Mainz U19 squad beat Manchester City to advance to the quarter final.
Next up is Porto which seems the most difficult opponent in the tournament given they have won against last years winner Alkmaar and beaten Barca 4:0 im the group stage:

[Foye]

Harry Kane curse in full effect.
2-2 draw in Freiburg.
Not going to win the championship this season.

[Foye]

8-1 loss at Bayern.
Horrible performance.

[Foye]

2-0 win against Bochum.
Game wasn’t pretty but much needed 3 points.

[cgf]

Agree on Kroos, as for the rest this board and general football fandom are too dumb to talk with. I'll save that for my business strategy communities in the biannual circumstances they talk sports and football businesses. The probable next steps will likely be club level pe fundraising which will be way worse for the buli than the structured raise idea since the bottom 14 teams are going to get nothing. Also that response was so lazy. You have no concrete alternatives brought to the table, and didn't even tie 1+1 in noticing how the last 2 years of Bayern mismanagement tie directly into the fundraising motivation now. It's disappointing as you were the only person here who expressed basic literacy about corporate investment.

You just don't get that the BuLi isn't playing the same game as the EPL because it's not a purely profit driven venture. These clubs exist for the fans that pay dues, not for the broadcasters who need to draw casual eyeballs. So nobody wants the BuLi to turn into the kind of poorly run cash-grab that the EPL is...even if they've got the bigger names.

[cgf]

Anyways, shame Pavlovic had to withdraw, would've been very interesting to see how he did with our senior NT given how well he's doing for Bayern. Neither Pavlovic nor Martel is likely to be ready to take over the 6 for us before the next cycle, but with Can regressing from his exceptional level last season, the spot is there for the taking.

Will be interesting how we look against the French, wonder if Nagelsmann tries starting the Stuttgart left flank alongside the NT regulars, something like:

Füllkrug
Führich - Wirtz - Musiala
Andrich/Groß - Gundogan
Mittlestädt - Tah - Rüdiger - Kimmich
ter Stegen

[cgf]

2-0 win against Bochum.
Game wasn’t pretty but much needed 3 points.

Nice to see Burkardt scoring some goals. I'm really high on Gruda, Weiper, & Burkardt, when they're fit & on form. Feels like that could be a very exciting attacking trio for you if you stay up this season and they are all 100% next year.

[Foye]

Wirtz is the man.
Him and Musiala are fun to watch.

Also Kimmich finally at the RB position not causing chaos in the middle.

[Foye]

2-0 win against Bochum.
Game wasn’t pretty but much needed 3 points.

Nice to see Burkardt scoring some goals. I'm really high on Gruda, Weiper, & Burkardt, when they're fit & on form. Feels like that could be a very exciting attacking trio for you if you stay up this season and they are all 100% next year.

We also have Paul Nebel parked in the 2nd league who is playing well for Karlsruhe.

Need to stay in the league.
Else the trio is probably torn apart before they ever played together for a while.
Also Amiri will only stay if we stay in the league.

That said, I still think management has done a shockingly bad job to assemble the roster.
There is at least 10 players on the roster who are either not Bundesliga quality players or misused in their current role.

[cgf]

2-0 win against Bochum.
Game wasn’t pretty but much needed 3 points.

Nice to see Burkardt scoring some goals. I'm really high on Gruda, Weiper, & Burkardt, when they're fit & on form. Feels like that could be a very exciting attacking trio for you if you stay up this season and they are all 100% next year.

We also have Paul Nebel parked in the 2nd league who is playing well for Karlsruhe.

Need to stay in the league.
Else the trio is probably torn apart before they ever played together for a while.
Also Amiri will only stay if we stay in the league.

That said, I still think management has done a shockingly bad job to assemble the roster.
There is at least 10 players on the roster who are either not Bundesliga quality players or misused in their current role.

I don't rate Nebel nearly as much, think you've got a handful of similarly talented prospects that I'm not nearly as excited by as that trio. Nebel & co. certainly have first division talent, but Weiper / Gruda / Burkardt all have CL-starter talent.

[cgf]

Wirtz is the man.
Him and Musiala are fun to watch.

Also Kimmich finally at the RB position not causing chaos in the middle.

Yeah, those two together is like a cheat code. They were more dominant against France's senior team defense than Darvich & Brunner are for the youth teams...and those two have stood out in every match I've seen them play for our EM & WM winning team U17s & now our 18s.

Can't help feeling like we'll need Füllkrug in for Havertz when we face teams that will bunker against us, but I liked Nagelsmann overloading the midfield with Wirtz / Musiala / Havertz and Gundo / Kroos / Andrich against a big team like France.

Still won't trust our CBs until Thiaw & Schlotterbeck are ready to take over, but Kimmich at RB and a holding 6 does a ton for our structure...and Mittelstädt does look like a better defender than either Raum or Gosens; even if Gosens is more badass & dangerous in the opposing box.