Football: Bundesliga: Premier League broadcasts infomercial from the island

It was a nice time: Maybe Wataru Endo sometimes thinks back wistfully to the German Bundesliga when things were still contemplative around the turn of the year. That’s all over for him since the Japanese international moved from VfB Stuttgart to Liverpool FC. As soon as his opponent Newcastle United was defeated (4-2) in a breathtaking match at Anfield Road on New Year’s Day, the 30-year-old almost apologized for the fact that he will be required to captain the Japanese team in the next few weeks at the Asian Cup in Qatar . Just like a year ago with the World Cup, another tournament calls him to the desert. “You know that I have to play for my national team too,” Endo told Liverpool club media. “So I’ll go to Qatar, hopefully achieve a good result and then come back here.”

A global audience was amazed over the holidays at what this model professional achieves in midfield for the Premier League leaders. But not only in England, but also in Spain and Italy with their 20-team leagues. Germany is allowing itself a break from its history when winters were really characterized by snow and ice, even if this has shrunk significantly compared to before. Even when Christian Seifert was at the helm of the German Football League (DFL), it was always an issue over the past decade to do without it. The only thing that never got through was the reference to a necessary recovery phase for the players.

Seifert in particular was keen to point out that children and young people interested in football often discovered the English league during this period. Because the weather at home is bad, but holidays, swimming pools or ice skating rinks are usually overcrowded – and not every family can or wants to afford a ski holiday. In fact, more and more fans in this country are consuming the infomercial from the island – especially young people on their smartphones. When zapping through football news, quite a few people get stuck on the Premier League, which has also opened up digitally to a much greater extent than the Bundesliga.

Even if you don’t have a subscription to the pay channel Sky with its exclusive Premier League broadcasts, you’ll get plenty of coverage with just a few clicks. Liverpool alone has 9.1 million subscribers on YouTube, reaches more than 17 million people on Tiktok and even almost 44 million on Instagram. For comparison: At Borussia Dortmund it’s less than half on all of these platforms. Bernd Leno, goalkeeper of FC Fulham, recently told the Funke media group: “I have the feeling that football in England is ten years ahead in terms of marketing, digitalization and the way the product is sold abroad.”

Also due to the language barrier broken by its colonial history, the English league has built up an exciting reach across the globe. The German correspondent Sven Haist, who lives in London, recently put it aptly in an article: “The rapidly advancing globalization and the resulting skyrocketing interest in football accelerated the popularity of the Premier League. This development attracted wealthy investors from all over the world, who were welcomed with open arms by the privately organized English football operation. In many ways, the club structures in England appear to be a reflection of the free Anglo-Saxon market economy. In this way, in conjunction with the English tradition as the motherland of football, the clubs created a financial advantage for themselves.

The makers are almost completely using the calendar. To ensure that there was no calm after half a dozen games on December 23rd, Chelsea FC had to play in Wolverhampton on Christmas Eve – for the first time in 28 years. It was said afterwards that the test balloon flew well. Why not, the gifts won’t be opened on the island until December 25th. Traditionally strong ratings are recorded for games on Boxing Day, Boxing Day, after which the ball rolled in at least one English stadium every day, with the exception of December 29th, until January 2nd.

We’ll also be taking a breather this weekend. The third round of the FA Cup is spread over five days, comparable to the German DFB Cup, which sees the top teams Arsenal and Liverpool meet in the next hit on Sunday evening. The constantly stressed protagonists on the pitch are paid so well that they hardly complain about the rush to meet deadlines.

Football in an endless loop has not just been part of the business model since yesterday. The Premier League recently concluded a new TV contract that will bring in the equivalent of almost two billion euros per season from national media rights from 2025/2026. But these are only the national revenues, plus another 1.85 billion euros from foreign marketing. For comparison: the Bundesliga clubs earn a total of 1.3 billion euros because there is still a lot of catching up to do internationally. Broadcasters from abroad pay just 200 million euros for the broadcast rights.

A proper strategy has not yet been drawn up as to how to catch up. Apparently the new DFL management wants to use the investor deal, which was recently brought through with difficulty and hated by most organized fans, for exactly this purpose. The “winter break” is still being held: According to the general schedule for 2024/2025, the last game will be played on December 22nd, and things will continue in the third week of January 2025.

The league currently doesn’t even agree on how best to prepare for the restart after the break over the holidays. Many clubs have stayed at home, others such as Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, FSV Mainz 05 and SV Darmstadt 98 are currently practicing in Spain. FC Bayern is taking a special route, preparing for the first Bundesliga game of 2024 against TSG Hoffenheim (January 12th) at home, but then jetting off to a training camp in Faro in Portugal. In recent years, the Munich team has always gone to Qatar, which led to heated sports policy debates, including with their own fans. There would hardly be any space for Bayern this year anyway, because the best 24 Asian national teams are taking over almost all of the facilities that are still standing a good year after the World Cup.