Inside the Bundesliga’s international media strategy

0:03Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Streamtime Sports. I'm your host Nick Meacham, CEO at SportsPro. Now this week's edition of the podcast is where we'll take a deeper look into the strategy of the Bundesliga. Now the Bundesliga is the German domestic football league and has long impressed in its approach in growing and maximizing its visibility and revenue from international markets outside of Germany. To learn more about this and their strategy and approach, I got the chance to speak with their CEO, Pierre Norbert, on stage at the Sports Pro Media Summit in Madrid, where we got into how they distribute and produce their matches and how they ultimately maximize the value of their rights through different approaches across the globe.

0:49One market we looked at is, of course, the United Kingdom, where they have partnered with a host of YouTube channels, mix of broadcasters and streamers to maximize their visibility in a market that has long been difficult to generate significant media partnerships and media rights revenue for anyone not named for Premier League. Pira gives some interesting insights in their approach and their decision making and I think it's worth a listen for anyone looking to grow and develop their media rights strategy in such a complex media environment that we operate today. Okay, so, well, that's enough for me.

1:26It's time for me to hand over to me talking to Pierre Norbert of the Bundesliga International.

1:36Hello, everyone. I'm excited about this final session, Pierre. I've been waiting for this all event. So glad you could join us and fly in last night to share us an insight on the Bundesliga after we've heard quite a bit about some of the other leagues and teams in the previous session. So let's start with, for those that aren't familiar necessarily, have been paying close attention, what exactly is Bundesliga's international strategy? How would you summarize it? First and foremost, thanks a lot to you and your team for inviting me, having me, and thanks to all of you for turning up. It's a pleasure, much appreciated.

2:15Coming back to your question, what's our strategy? So when we start discussing about the strategy, we look at the ultimate objective first. And our ultimate objective is maximizing revenues by building brand equity. I think this is very important to bear in mind and also to exactly in that kind of sequence, building brand equity first, because then usually revenues follow. How do we do that? We position the Bundesliga as football as it's meant to be. Real, authentic, pure football. And I think hopefully everybody in this room and even globally agrees with that, that Bundesliga has a very unique stadium atmosphere in the stadium.

2:56It has by far the lowest ticket prices. It has the highest audience on average for the Bundesliga itself. On average, we create or draw roughly like 42 ,000 per matchday, which is even above the Premier League. And even our second Bundesliga is on eye level with our Italian and Spanish First League friends. So that describes, I think, best how our position is currently in regards to the stadium atmosphere. But off the field, we also have very unique and very traditional clubs. You know that we have this 50 plus 1 rule, which really sets us apart. For those who are not familiar with that one, all our clubs are owned or most of the majority of our clubs are owned by the fans and the fans have the final say when it comes to decisions being taken in their annual assemblies.

3:55And then on the pitch we have global stars and especially local heroes. For example we have the most Asian players and we have had more Asian players than all the other four top leagues combined. We have had the most US players and we shoot the most goals. Someone could say because that's because of the shitty German goalies. I'm not sure whether that's true or not. We also have, you know, pretty young squad. We have the highest number of, you know, shots on goal on average. We have the highest number of chances created of open play. We have the best fair play. So, you know, on the field there's a lot going on, which really sets us apart from the other leagues.

4:37And then when we speak about our international strategy after the positioning, how do we bring this to life? We have our marketing mix, which we created when we started our marketing activities back in 2018, based on the idea of football is meant to be, and that starts with the media product. For those who are familiar with our media product, we have a state-of-the-art, you know, technical and content media product, usually rated above all the other leagues by our media partners each year. We have our own and operators, like the content marketing. We have third-party digital partners like content partners or creators, a network of more than 100 creators globally.

5:23We work a lot in terms of experiential marketing. We do have lots of grassroots activities, such as the Bundesliga Dream or the Bundesliga Common Grounds. and we do a lot in PR and then also working with many other sports organizations and corporations such as the NFL for example or many other football leagues and football associations and then how do we bring this to life actively is we have eight offices in total globally to support our thinking like think global, act local and have an amazing team around which really smells, breathes lifts football is meant to be every day. So one of the things that you've got some clear USPs, but equally when you're talking to broadcasters in other markets internationally, maybe across Asia and so forth, the differentiation between other, say, European top leagues is probably difficult for some of them to digest.

6:23Things like the higher numbers of US players, Asian players, et cetera, has that been something that the Bundesliga is somehow being able to facilitate, or has it just been a byproduct of how things have played out that you now are able to lean into that ratio? When we look into the main drivers for fandom, you know, across our fan funnel, but also ultimately then in terms of revenues, players are one part of it. Yes, that's a key driver for revenue. Not across, you know, each and every country, because in some countries it's kind of, you know, given or it's kind of hygiene criteria, but especially when we talk about markets like Indonesia or Colombia, you know, Spanish-speaking Latin America, we see significant impact by individual players, such as, you know, when we take Luis Diaz, who was transferred to Bayern at the beginning of this season, we see, as of today, kind of a 4X of ratings already.

7:23We saw just his announcement video on our own operation, was seen by more than 60 million people. When we speak about Kevin Dix, it's a 2x in terms of ratings, and we saw an uplift in regards to our global social media followership of 12%, and the club he's playing for, Borussia Mönchengladbach, saw an uplift of 16%. So you can immediately measure and see the value of those players. however that does not account you know for all markets in the same way but it definitely helps so when you're seeing an uptick like that i'm always fascinated by this a few other the big leagues i've had similar conversations with when you see an uptick like that because of particularly because of the athletes that have joined that bring that extra layer of storytelling and awareness to the league how are you then able to turn that into commercial value because ultimately that's what you need to maximize the opportunity you can't just let it take care of itself for a while.

8:25So, if you're seeing this uptick in numbers, how do you then make the most of it? I mean, there's no, let's say, blueprint, there's no magic formula, but, I mean, ratings and love for the Bundesliga, you know, let's say the number of people increased across the fan funnel subsequently translates into revenue increase. Because, I mean, it's a very easy equation, which I think is valid for the last 30 years, that the more people watch, the more people like, the more people are interested in the league, obviously the higher the value is. And then in the end it's on us to find the right commercial setup and the best packaging, the best pricing in order to create the highest value.

9:14So one of the other things that you have as a USP from what I've understood previously is effectively that, say, the product is packaged up, ready to go. In terms of you manage all the broadcast production, all the technologies largely in-house, that glass-to-glass is part of it, which has been a phrase we've heard here many times over the years. Just talk a bit about that and how important is that as a bigger enabler as I think it is in terms of saying to a broadcaster, we're going to be able to give this to you when it's ready to go from day one. Yeah, it's definitely a differentiator. It definitely helps us to set us apart from other football leagues, but also from other sports organizations in the discussions with our media partners or even prospects.

9:59And it really helps drive value because, as you said, the glass-to-glass strategy puts us in the position that we can tackle the value chain wherever we want. We can do whatever we want in order to also service our media partners where they need it, when they need it, how they need it. And for those who are not 100 % familiar with the glass-to-glass strategy, it's the fact that we as a Bundesliga own the entire value chain from live production up to adding value by data with our subsidiary or sister company Sportex Solutions, which generates 150 million data points per match, first and second league, which obviously helps enhancing the value of our product, be it through additional match facts or also helping our media partners to do better analytics.

10:54And then we have our own content house, DFL Digital Sports, which produces the commentaries but also everything in addition to the live match, like all our shoulder programming, which is, again, state-of-the-art in football. last but not least we also have the Bundesliga International which I represent as one of 50 and we do the distribution but also the marketing and all this is then also supported by some of our partners so taking a partner like ServiceNow which we added this summer but especially even more AWS whom we won a reward last night together with You did indeed. Thanks a lot for this.

11:42AWS is an amazing partner, and they are deeply rooted into our entire ecosystem. So it's really a win-win situation which we create because they really elaborate and leverage us as a communication platform while we jointly grow together in regards to tech projects. And just to name a few, they helped us to set out 16 additional match facts with which we I think took football analytics to a completely different level copied by pretty much all the other leagues or friends and then we also created a lot of value with them in regards to content so I think there's no panel discussion today without mentioning AI we produced a lot of content together with them hyper personalized content localized content and they're helping us you know to decrease you know the efforts by 50 % so productivity gains by 50 % we have doubled the time spent in the app by our users by leveraging those technologies and even increase the retention of the app users by 67 % so this is you know deeply rooted into our system and I would say this glass-to-glass approach is really setting us apart.

13:06I mean it must be one of AWS's most successful partnerships I think globally and evident by you winning an award last night. Clearly that is all the validation they would need. I just want to make a point of your description there of that key differentiator. The fact that if you're talking to a marketplace say a linear broadcaster in Asia or what have you and the ability to say they might be looking oh we want football in our suite of programming. The fact that they can come to you and take that almost out of the box effectively because you've done so much. I think it's a huge USP when you're probably competing and having similar conversations with some of or they're having similar conversations with some of your European counterparts.

13:43So I think that is a really big differentiator that is sometimes lost on some of the wider industry. Just to add on that, also the fact that we are, from my point of view, the league which is working closest with the clubs puts us in the position that we can pretty much facilitate most of the requirements asked by our media partners. So if there's an Asian media partner saying, I want to have a midweek interview with whoever it is, like Harry Kane, yeah, that's possible. We don't need to ask any kind of service provider. We can immediately say yes or no. We can immediately contact our clubs. We can immediately facilitate this.

14:19And that's really helpful. So one of the hot topics for this year's event has been YouTube as a platform and as a destination for live sports especially, but also the use of working with creators to distribute content. It grabbed a lot of headlines, particularly across the industry and definitely in the UK when you partnered with a couple of different interesting array of partners in the UK to distribute your live matches across that marketplace. Sky was one of the partners again, but Mark Aldridge and also the Overlap podcast were two partners that I think caught a lot of people by surprise when you took that approach.

14:56Now, not the first time. You have actually taken a YouTube creator-letter approach, from what I understand. But definitely, from a Western market perspective, it was very, very interesting. Just talk us through the strategy or maybe the decision to pull that lever. I'm surprised. This question comes quite late in the discussion we have. Well, you were saying so much good stuff earlier. I didn't want to use it too early. Going a few steps back, when we speak about international strategy, I think we have to bear in mind that Bundesliga in Germany is by far the biggest beast in town, right? I think there's hardly any market globally which is so monothematic than Germany and football.

15:38Even in the UK, for example, I think the number two, number three sports are, you know, obviously there's a gap between football and number two, but I think Germany is, it's a huge gap. But internationally, we have to realize, and sometimes it's a little bit hard for us, for our stakeholders, that we are a challenger brand. Looking at the revenues, we saw that in the previous panel, they are different to the Premier League, for example. And that puts us in the position that when we go into our markets, that we need to think differently. We need to think a little bit more progressive. We need to find additional opportunities.

16:15and as I said before one part of our marketing mix is obviously our media strategy because that brings us in a position to figure out do we go for a huge reach approach or do we rather follow the revenue approach or do we try to combine it whatever it is and then when we did our homework as we do for every market it's not a very UK specific process when we did our homework for the UK we came to the conclusion that a mix of different providers, different partners would be a very compelling one because that would help us to truly drive eyeballs while still maintain very significant and good value for us.

17:03Naturally the UK market is Premier League centric and obviously they scoop up a lot of the media rights revenue that exists in that market and Sky's made a big commitment to them and to the EFL and the lower leagues within the UK. Did you find that, therefore, that was one of the leading factors there that basically they have seemed to become very, what do you call it, like prudent, I suppose, with where they're investing in their media rights to get that further exposure with Sky and said you had to take a bit more control of your visibility and take a different approach looking at the YouTube angle?

17:36I think it was less a financial discussion. as you pointed out, it was much more discussion around do we have or do they have enough space to distribute and broadcast additional content after they gained more rights from the Premier League and even added the EFL, as you said. And then their conclusion was they desperately wanted to have the top match, the Bundesliga top match, but they didn't find additional space for other matches. And then something some of our stakeholders forget that in the UK you still have this, you know, effect of blocked hours, which is an interesting one. One day, one day, that will go, but until then we're, the UK is stuck with it.

18:20Yeah, which also, you know, doesn't help us because we play usually four to five matches in parallel on a Saturday afternoon, 3.30 German time, and that those matches fall exactly in the blocked hours, which means that we can only sell roughly 50 % or even less of our matches in the UK. And given the fact that Sky were to retain the top match, so we had to find additional solutions for the remaining matches. And then, exactly as I said before, we were testing and looking into each and every angle and trying to figure out what's the best setup for us, with the ultimate conclusion that we found some new partners which might have raised some ABOs.

19:01And I think the expectations, or the engagement met our expectations, but the response to the UK deal blew past them. And maybe we can even do kind of field research. What do you think about it? And why do you think it was discussed so much? I haven't had anyone turn the moderator role backwards on me. I think it was a great move. I particularly think with you need a destination, need a channel. I was going to, my next question to you was going to ask, and my question was when I saw it, is why not just lean into your own channels? Why are you working with third-party providers? And how did you get to that point?

19:41Because that was a bit, I think, some fans might just not understand. I get you reach a new set of audiences by doing so. But the journey to find those channels and those people isn't an obvious one. So there's going to be a marketing part to that. So that was a bit that struck me was using other parties rather than just leaning into your own channels on that platform. Did I answer that all right? No, no, that helps. Thank you. To lay out the current setup. So on a Friday night, there's one Bundesliga match and we are broadcast in the UK now on the BBC player. So in the BBC environment, we have teamed up with two streamers.

20:27We even stream on our own YouTube channel in addition to that. We're pretty keen to find streamers like Mark Goldbridge and The Overlap in order to help us promoting the brand and leverage their existing followership. And if we look at the results already we see that in a like-for-like comparison between the previous Friday night games in the previous cycle versus today we have a 15 to 20x in terms of viewership on a Friday night. And if we look into the target groups, it's very interesting and I think it was brought up by our friends from YouTube earlier today, that 55 % of the people consuming through YouTube streams are between 13 and 34.

21:17If you compare that to the average or the age of the average Bundesliga fan in the UK, which is 42, which pretty much equals to the generic Bundesliga, sorry, football fan in the UK, that also helps us a lot, you know, driving eyeballs in the younger target groups. So you're working with these partners to get enhanced distribution. It's delivering solid numbers for you. What I'm curious is how do you make that work for you? You talk about brand equity, but also therefore commercially, ultimately, there's a point that's got to pay back, not just for you, but also for the people you're working with, the creators you're working with and the other platforms.

21:54The good thing is we pretty much maintained the same value. the challenge for us is in the past we had one partner and now we have multiple partners we obviously have to service we have to speak to on a daily or weekly basis and that creates a lot of comparatively more efforts on our end but I think it's for the better of the Bundesliga in the UK and if we then look at the feedback from our media partners so far it's very positive because they are demanding more and more content on a pretty much weekly basis so just the one thing that's curious about the distribution there is um mark goldridge does his own version takes there's a it's a it's a pretty good piece of production that he lays onto it um with the overlap it's a straight distribution of the existing feed was that something you talked to them directly about rather than adding their own flavor to it because we've seen those that do add more depth to the production do get a lot more value particularly out of youtube Yes, I mean we discussed, we had always kind of a threesome discussion, you know, YouTube, the streamers and us and discussed which would be the best way forward and I think it always depends on the target group but in the end I think for us it's very valuable if Mark Goldbridge adds his own flavour to it.

23:12Why not the decision to say roll out direct to consumer in that market in a heavy way and lean into your own and operate channels given your pedigree of producing great tech powered solutions? I mean, we do have our own OTT offering in other markets, but the assessment, the thorough process we had gone through really came with the result of this setup would put us in a better position. All right, so a couple of questions before we wrap up, not only for this session, but indeed for the event. Let's go to the top one there. League competitiveness is one of the key factors in international appeal.

23:53Bayern is a touch Bayern heavy. Sorry, Bundesliga is a touch Bayern heavy. Is this something you are looking into for international growth? Can you make any difference there on what happened on the field? That's how that question sounds. I mean, I would see it from a different perspective. I think what Bayern is doing is very, very impressive. If you look at their performance so far in the Champions League this season, again, I would say not too bad. we saw PSG on the stage before and I think they had to learn it the hard way that Bayern is very strong at this stage and Bayern is a trailblazer for us internationally while clubs like Busser Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen they are doing a lot internationally as well so it's a very compelling setup we have and clubs are really supporting us as a league and vice versa There was an interesting, so we've had Dime Media at the event previously, and the chairman and CEO have obviously had roles at the Bundesliga, and now the DFL has taken investment in that platform.

25:03Can you tell us what the reasoning there was? Finding a good and interesting partner to jointly work on the future. So something that I think DFL for equity was a project previously, Is that something that's still rolling then as an initiative? Is it defined as such, or is that just on an opportunistic basis if something opportunity presents itself? So, I mean, the Dyn opportunity came independent of DFL creativity. DFL creativity is still rolling. It's more like a tactical opportunistic approach, and the Dyn is more like a strategic investment. So looking back home for a second, obviously you're focused on international, but can you just give us a state of how you're seeing, how the DFL is seeing the local marketplace in general?

25:47Obviously, there's changes afoot with what's happening with RTL and Sky Deutschland as well. How do you see the market overall? First and foremost, national is not my remit, nor is it my credit that we were able to create growth at home what others couldn't, which is great. In regards to the shift in our landscape, I think we are looking very positive at the acquisition of Sky Deutschland by RTL because that puts Sky into a position that now a decision is going to be made in Germany, from Germany, for Germany. Not saying that Comcast in Philly is not a great partner, not at all. Sky and Comcast were great partners, but I think if Sky is going to be part of a family-owned media house, one of the biggest media houses worldwide, and run in Germany, I think that helps a lot also on their end to take decisions which are very entrepreneurial and they fully understand the meaning of the Bundesliga for the German market.

26:52Final question here. I want to just quickly talk about the US, if I can. Big market for all of sports. World Cup's coming. You've got a pretty big deal there, a deal out in that market. It's been a focus for you for some time. How do you see the US for you playing out longer term? Do you have any maybe concerns that you're going to be able to keep and grow the media rights revenue in that market because there's a lot of competition out there and a lot of change happening over there?

27:21Where do we start? So in order to prepare us for the future in the US we teamed up with our friends from relevant September last year. I think there was quite a wise decision not because I have taken it because I was only partly involved. But I think it was the right decision in order to have a strong partner in a very strong market, which is going through some challenges as well at the moment for international rights holders, especially those who are not premium premium. And I think the NFL, the NBA, the Premier League, the Champions League, they all have great contracts there, and I'm pretty sure that they will also see a bright future.

28:04I think for most of the other leagues, it's going to be a very interesting market in the future. We are pretty confident that, let's say, the final outcome of our process will be great for the brand equity as well as for the revenue side. Great stuff. Well, look, we have run fast out of time. But, Pera, really thank you for joining us and sharing us a little bit of insight into the Bundesliga's international strategy. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you.