Another interesting German football article

On the BBC Sport today.

Union Berlin fans get paid for giving blood, which keeps the club going.

In 2008 their 22,000 capacity ground was crumbling, with no money to repair it or move to a new ground.

2,500 fans agreed to work for nothing and rebuilt it.  They put in 140,000 hours between them and completed the job.

That is where we are going wrong! 😏  The fans should have rebuilt BP 20 years ago or built a new stadium ourselves.  The only way to get anything done. 😕

Just been that article by a mate:

Amazing. If Town were really threatened with going out of business I reckon we would rally round like that.

Don't give the heirachy any ideas...it will be our fault the grounds not been rebuilt now

Quoted from KingstonMariner

Just been that article by a mate:

Amazing. If Town were really threatened with going out of business I reckon we would rally round like that.

Hahaha really???
Didn't we raise X amount of funds & receive zero confirmation of were it went??
Lots of German clubs have a real connection with fans which we could only dream about.
On another level entirely.

I am a demolition expert-I will give my time for free.

Quoted from Stadium

Hahaha really???
Didn't we raise X amount of funds & receive zero confirmation of were it went??
Lots of German clubs have a real connection with fans which we could only dream about.
On another level entirely.

Yes really.

German clubs have to be 50.5% owned by the fans. That helps!!

Lots of stuff we could learn from the Germans.

Quoted from KingstonMariner

Yes really.

German clubs have to be 50.5% owned by the fans. That helps!!

Lots of stuff we could learn from the Germans.

Exactly my point.
German clubs are light years ahead with fan /club engagement.

This is how it should be done (from a article in 2013)

Fans are important in the German game, not in this country.

Low ticket prices

Bundesliga clubs seem much like the rest of German business (and very different from clubs in the Premier League in England and Wales, for example).

They are not indebted to the point of drowning. They rely much more on incomes generated and then invested in the game.
Image caption Entry prices are generally cheaper at top-flight German clubs than in England and Wales

Above all, they are clubs, in the legal sense of being formally constituted associations with members who elect officials.

Ticket prices are low. In the Bundesliga, the average price for the cheapest tickets is just over £10. In the Premier League, fans pay upwards of £28.

For a season ticket, it averages £207 in Germany's top-flight games compared with £468 in England.

At Bayern Munich, you can get in (albeit to stand) for £12. Fans of Borussia Dortmund pay £9 to get into the south stand and form "Die gelbe Wand" - the "yellow wall" of colour from the club's shirts and scarves.

Contrast those prices with £30 at the cheap end in Manchester United or Real Madrid.

This is a matter of policy.
'Member-owners'

When Uli Hoeness, the president of Bayern Munich, was asked why the club didn't have higher ticket prices, like they do in England, he said: "We do not think the fans are like cows to be milked. Football has got to be for everybody. That's the biggest difference between us and England."

German clubs are organised in a very different way from British clubs.

    Uli Hoeness, the president, is the man who has the connections
    Carlo Wild, Kicker magazine

In the Premier League, assorted billionaires own the top clubs (Manchester United - the Glazer family; Manchester City - Sheikh Mansour; Chelsea - Roman Abramovich).

In Germany, there is the "50 + 1" rule, whereby the association or club has to have a controlling stake, commercial interests can't gain control, In Bayern Munich, for example, Audi and Adidas each own 9% but the rest is controlled by the members via the club.

There are two exceptions: Wolfsburg is owned by Volkswagen and Bayer Leverkusen is owned by the chemical company, Bayer - both clubs originated as works sporting clubs. But generally a club in Germany is a true club for the members.

So if you ask fans outside a Bayern game who owns the club, they are incredulous: "The members, of course", they say.
Sponsorship

The members elect the president, in the case of Bayern, Uli Hoeness, who retains great respect despite being investigated over his tax affairs.

He, as a legendary Bayern and Germany player, uses his name to draw in sponsorship. With lower incomes from tickets, German clubs tend to put more weight on sponsorship deals - the magnificent Allianz Stadium in Munich is an example.

In 2011, the total revenue for Bayern was 368m euros (£300m), not that far below that of Manchester United with 395m euros (£320m).
Image caption Uli Hoeness is a former Bayern Munich playing legend turned president of the club

But the German club got 55% of its revenue from commercial deals with companies compared with 37% from that source for Manchester United. British clubs tend to get a bigger slice of their income from the fans.

German clubs tend to form close associations with local firms, which often turn out to be big global companies.

Carlo Wild, the chief reporter of Kicker football magazine, told the BBC that Bayern Munich uses the appeal of the big former football stars who have been elected by the fans to run the club.

He says: "Uli Hoeness, the president, is the man who has the connections. The name of Franz Beckenbauer - the Kaiser - is also very important. And he opens doors, but Uli Hoeness is the man who acquired the companies, the sponsors."

German clubs - just like the rest of German business - tends to be phobic about debt.
Long-term thinking

Many Premier League clubs run at a loss. Most Bundesliga clubs run at a profit. The difference is in the way German clubs keep costs down.

According to Twentyfour7 Football magazine, Bundesliga clubs made a profit of £47m last season while the Premier League made a loss of £207m, even though the income to the British league was higher (£2.4bn) than to German clubs (£1.78bn).
Image caption The Wembley final is a showcase for German football

But in the Bundesliga, it said, wages were 38% of the clubs' revenue while the in Premier League it was 67% (and as high as 93% in one English case).

German clubs do buy stars. To add spice to the final on Saturday, Bayern Munich recently bought Borussia Dortmund midfielder Mario Gotze for a reported €37m (£31.5m).

But they also groom youngsters who increasingly come up through the system.

On Saturday, two German teams will be on show. But also an off-the-field model of sports organisation - a model which treads carefully, building relationships, thinking long-term.

Quoted from Stadium

Exactly my point.
German clubs are light years ahead with fan /club engagement.

It helps that it is a rule set by the league when it was reformed way back after the War. We have to campaign to get to a similar position.

Not helped when you get idiots like Notts County and Portsmouth fans literally selling out in search of a quick fix when they had control of their clubs after saving them.