Not one side from the former East Germany (DDR) has won a Bundesliga title in the nineteen years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It looks like the wait could go on for quite a while, as Energie Cottbus are the old East’s sole representative in the top flight and even their position is under threat – they are currently bottom of the division. After reunification, the only DDR sides in a financial condition to join the top flight were Dinamo Dresden and Hansa Rostock.
Not one side from the former East Germany (DDR) has won a Bundesliga title in the nineteen years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It looks like the wait could go on for quite a while, as Energie Cottbus are the old East’s sole representative in the top flight and even their position is under threat – they are currently bottom of the division. After reunification, the only DDR sides in a financial condition to join the top flight were Dinamo Dresden and Hansa Rostock. Rostock are now in the second division while the once highly successful Dresden are languishing in the first divison with a reputation tarnished by an extremist fringe among their followers. The only DDR side ever to enjoy European success were FC Magdeburg who won the Uefa Cup Winners’ Cup in 1974. It is evident that the failure of the sides from the East has a lot to do with differences in financial resources. The east of Germany, leaving aside areas like Greater Berlin, has never really caught up economically with the west of the country with persistently high unemployment in many areas. I once lived in Berlin and I travelled a certain amount in the DDR – which was an odd experience in itself. It was supposedly the most successful Communist country, but it was way behind the west economically, although it put a lot of resources into sport, particularly athletics (somewhat controversially). Yet many in the east feel nostalgia for the DDR when as the joke went ‘You pretend to work and we pretend to pay you.’
UPDATE 1: Bundesliga Seal TV deal – 1/12/08
Germany’s only pay television channel, Premiere, will pay about €1bn to show live Bundesliga football for four seasons from 2009. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is the largest shareholder in Premiere. The company admitted it was paying more per season than any previous rights holder. Premiere will be paying €255m a year in 2009, rising to €275m in 2012. The now defunct marketing company Arena was believed to have paid around €200m a year. However, Premiere will be able to show more live football. Together with rights for public TV highlights and for other media, the German league will make €412m a year, marginally higher than the €405m a year it secured three years ago. Premiere’s investment is meant to lure subscribers to a channel that revised its subscriber numbers down from 4.3m to 2.5m soon after Mark Williams, a News Corp veteran, took over as chief executive. There has been speculation that Mr Murdoch will not be satisfied with his 25.01 per stake and will launch a full takeover.
UPDATE 2: Bundesliga Tops Shirt Sponsorship League – 6/12/08
Sport-Markt’s tenth annual European Jersey report shows that Germany’s Bundesliga has overtaken the English Premiership as the league with the largest total income from shirt sponsorship. Bayern Munich are ahead of Manchester United in having the single most valuable shirt sponsorship deal. However, the drop in the value of the pound against the euro has been largely responsible for reducing the value of English sponsorship deals relative to those of the top European clubs. It also helps to explain why the overall level of shirt sponsorship across the six main European leagues has dropped for the first time from about €405.3m in 2007-8 to €393.3m this season. For the first time the revenue from shirt sponsorship in the Bundesliga has topped the €100m mark. At the other end of the scale, a dip in revenues in Spain means that it has almost been caught by the Dutch Eredivisie. However, Sport-Markt expects England to regain its pre-eminence.