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In sport, innovation is key to maintaining relevance and staying ahead of the competition. However, as German Football League (DFL) co-chief executive Steffen Merkel will attest, chasing new ideas should be balanced with the pressure to meet fans’ high expectations.
Since taking on the role with Marc Lenz in 2023, Merkel has focused on strengthening the Bundesliga’s commercial standing while embracing new technologies to help enhance its global appeal.
So far, his tenure has included overhauling the Bundesliga’s international media rights strategy, centralising business operations, and bucking the trend of many European leagues by securing an increase in the value of the German top flight’s domestic broadcast contracts.
Speaking exclusively to SportsPro at SportsInnovation at the Merkur Spiel-Arena in Düsseldorf, Merkel reflects on his time leading the DFL so far, discusses the health of the Bundesliga, and reveals the biggest opportunities for the league moving forward.
Steffen Merkel (pictured, left) was appointed co-chief executive of the DFL alongside Marc Lenz (right) in June 2023 (Image credit: Getty Images)
You’ve extended your contract as co-CEO until 2029. What reflections or lessons have you drawn from your time in the role so far?
It has been an amazing two years. But I must confess, it’s also been an intense two years with an investor process that we had launched but didn’t get over the finish line, and with a domestic media rights tender that took a bit longer than expected. But overall, I draw a very positive conclusion over the first two years, which was also one of the reasons why the presidential board and I decided that we prolong the contract until the end of 2029.
I would say that the DFL, that the Bundesliga as a whole, is well equipped for the future, especially after the new economic numbers for the Bundesliga, which we recently released. But also, I see that the domestic media market after the last tender that we finished is in a good shape and well equipped for future success.
One notable aspect of your tenure has been the restructuring and strategic repositioning of the DFL. What was the thinking behind that?
At the end of last year, we decided to found a new company within the DFL Group, which will be called Bundesliga Media. This will be an entity where we centralise all commercial functions sitting within the DFL Group, including domestic media rights, international media rights, sponsoring and licensing partnerships, the marketing department and all digital platforms.
This is an idea that originally emerged during the investor process that we had two-and-a-half years ago, where we already wanted to centralise some of those functions which were scattered around in the DFL Group to be honest. So this new company is essentially a merger of the two Bundesliga subsidiaries (Bundesliga International and DFL Digital Sports) with the domestic media business because we believe that all of those fields cannot be separated anymore.
The domestic and the international media rights businesses are so closely interconnected nowadays, which you also see with partners such as DAZN, who are a domestic partner and also our partner internationally. Often, we talk to the same people and, therefore, we said that in order to have a marketing effort that comes out of one hand, we need to found this company.
Do you see the integration of these two businesses as essential for the long-term growth and success of the DFL?
Yes, we see this as absolutely crucial. Another example is the close interlinkage between international media rights sales and also digital platforms. On an operational level, the teams within the DFL Group have always been in very close contact, constantly aligning on the overall strategy. But what we have seen over the last few years is that, more and more, we had moments where we had to take a decision whether to sell international media rights in a traditional way or launch our own digital platform in a certain international target market.
Having those businesses sit within two different entities is a very different thing to manage. So by combining this into one entity, having all the decisions on one desk and one supervisory board, we believe makes us much more agile in the future.
The DFL reported record revenue of €6.64 billion for 2024/25, including €5.12 billion from the Bundesliga. How financially stable would you say the league is today and how well is it positioned to sustain this growth?
The numbers are extremely strong. There have been record revenues for the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 generated more than €1.2 billion, which is more than the top tier generated when the DFL was founded 25 years ago.
The economic foundation on which the clubs and the league organisation stand today are really, really strong. We have a very balanced revenue structure. If you dive deeper, you see that the growth is actually coming from many sources. Media rights revenues, especially the domestic ones, have developed in a very positive way. Many clubs have been very successful on the sponsoring side, moving beyond the pure domestic sponsoring business and exploring virtual advertising in international markets.
Match day revenue has also developed really well, there were more than 21 million spectators in the 2024/25 season for the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2. We don’t just rely on a single stream of revenue.
The 2024/25 season saw combined revenues for Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 clubs exceed €6 billion for the first time (Image credit: Getty Images)
Significant international investment is flowing into other European soccer leagues and multi-club ownership continues to grow.
The Bundesliga, meanwhile, is unique in that it has the 50+1 rule. How do you see these factors impacting the competitiveness of German soccer?
I see us still in a very strong economic and competitive position. If you look at the bare revenue numbers, which are a good proxy for financial competitiveness, and also on the transfer market, we are still number two.
The Premier League is the clear number one but the Bundesliga is still the clear number two in European football, despite the fact that we are just 18 teams. So the competitiveness in the transfer market, in the international markets and the international competitions is absolutely there.
The Bundesliga’s latest domestic broadcast rights deals with Sky and DAZN began this season. You were able to secure a slight increase in revenue on the previous contracts. How did you achieve that in what has been a challenging media rights market?
We are extremely happy with the outcome of the domestic media rights tender that we concluded in the end of 2024 and are also very confident in the future of the market. The financial result was a rather small increase but, against the backdrop of the market, it was a success that gives the clubs planning security until the end of the decade.
We were also super happy to keep Sky Deutschland and DAZN as domestic partners [until the end of the 2028/29 season]. Both acquired major live packages once again. They will certainly be interested in acquiring Bundesliga rights in the future.
We have also seen with the Uefa Champions League auction at the end of last year that Paramount+ is entering the market as a new player. What this means for the Bundesliga rights auction in 2028 is a bit difficult to predict. But in general, I would say the state of the German market is a really good one and is one that makes me really confident for the next years to come.
Do you view international broadcast markets as an opportunity to innovate and experiment compared to the more traditional approach with domestic rights?
A clear yes is the answer. International markets are definitely an innovative test bed, although the ultimate goal for us is very clear in that we have to maximise revenue. But what we’ve seen over the last years in some markets is that we are in a challenger position. We can really create value because for us, just from a pure financial standpoint, there is not so much at stake compared to, for example, the US major leagues or the Premier League internationally.
With the UK market, it was a very conscious decision to take a new step there, as we’ve done also some years ago already in Brazil, where we saw that selling media rights in a very traditional way was not an option for us anymore. We said we wanted to reach new target groups, maximise the reach and the exposure of the Bundesliga. What we’ve seen in Brazil, now that we are three to four years in the market with the strategy, is that we are the fastest growing international football league in the country. We’ve more than doubled the revenues within the last three to four years alone.
So, there is not a blueprint for each and every market, it is always a market specific decision. But it can be a blueprint for some of the international markets in the future.
What role are players like Harry Kane and the influx of international talent currently in the Bundesliga playing in growing the league’s presence beyond its domestic market?
It’s one of the absolute key factors in growing interest for the Bundesliga, as with any other sports leagues internationally. Harry Kane signing at Bayern Munich has been a tremendously important factor in the growth that we’ve experienced in the UK over the last two to three years. Compared to four to five years ago, we’ve increased our reach numbers by a factor of three or four.
When we look at internationalisation, we always say it’s four factors that are decisive. Are the clubs successful in international competitions on a Uefa level? Do they have locally relevant heroes in the league? Do they have strong club brands? And are the sporting competitions, the sporting decisions, close and interesting or not?
Harry Kane’s arrival in Germany has played a key role in driving the Bundesliga’s UK audience (Image credit: Getty Images)
How do you balance the need for innovation, which often involves testing, making mistakes and adapting, with fan expectations?
We always approach innovation from a very practical perspective. One of the key ideas behind this approach are events like SportsInnovation, where you can really test innovative features in practice and also during Bundesliga match days. There are multiple opportunities to test opportunities offline during a Bundesliga match day, which is for us always a prerequisite before we launch something new. We have to see an idea in practice for us to truly understand what the value add for the fans is.
What areas have you identified as having the highest potential for implementing AI within the league’s operations?
When it comes to AI, for me the glass is always half full, not half empty. For us, it is absolutely an opportunity in many fields across the football industry, be it game-related matters such as scouting, injury prevention, training. There is also the media product with personalisation and localisation that becomes possible with the help of AI.
We don’t see it as a risk but we have to give ourselves clear guardrails and guidelines on how we want to deploy the technology. After SportsInnovation 2024, the DFL Group gave itself an internal code of conduct on how we want to implement AI and where the boundaries are.
One thing that is always important for the Bundesliga is being a very authentic sports league. What we are showing in terms of media content and media product has to be authentic, because obviously there are many possibilities to manipulate content with the help of AI. That is something that, for us, is always a no go as a league. People are coming to the stadium to experience a fantastic atmosphere, have real heroes that they are following. This is the guideline that we will not be surpassing. But otherwise, AI is certainly an opportunity to scale, especially the media product.
How often do you need to revisit that code of conduct and keep updating it as AI evolves?
To be honest, we haven’t updated this code of conduct formally. But what we always do when it comes to specific media content that we want to publish, we are revisiting where we stand against this code of conduct.
Two years ago, we had an example of a clip that we were posting on the Bundesliga International social media sites where we had a player that was piling three footballs on top of each other and then was shooting the top football into the goal. It was the most clicked video of that year on the Bundesliga social media channel. But people were asking if it was real or if it had been manipulated a bit. Yes, there was a bit of technological help behind it. This was a clear moment where we saw that we have to be very clear on when we use this. There should never be any question of whether the Bundesliga is true and authentic or not.
Are you working more closely with Bundesliga clubs to share best practices and areas of innovation, particularly ones that have proven commercially successful?
A very good example is virtual advertising. It was a project that I had started in the DFL eight or nine years ago. We said from the very beginning that is a club right. It’s about the LED boards. So, it is not about the DFL making the next €50 million or €60 million euros of revenue, which we then distribute to the clubs. We are, in this respect, a service provider.
We got the clubs together, showed them the possibilities from a technological side and showed them how we can implement it for them. We also gave them some advice on how they can use this commercially. This is a very good example of how the DFL, of how the Bundesliga ecosystem works.
In the end, it is about increasing the share for of the pie for everybody at the league, not just the league organisation.
What are you most excited about for the next few years as co-CEO of the DFL?
I’m excited every morning doing this job. It’s a big privilege in shaping the future of the organisation of the league on a day-to-day basis. In the job that I’m doing, shaping the future of the marketing of the league domestically and internationally is something that excites me every morning because I believe that there is still so much potential, especially in the international market.
There is space for us as a league that has a very unique culture that stands out in the way of how it’s managed, of how the clubs are owned, with a fantastic stadium atmosphere. Bringing this to life, bringing this to the people beyond Germany is something that really, really excites me.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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