Borussia Dortmund CEO: No external investment a “bad decision” for Bundesliga

• Watzke said “fans did not believe” DFL despite promises to not give operational control to an investor
• Bundesliga would have created a US-based pre-season tournament with some of the money

Borussia Dortmund chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke has called the Bundesliga’s failure to secure investment as a “bad decision” for the league.

24 of 36 clubs in the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 voted in December to permit the German Football League (DFL) to negotiate an investment deal worth €1 billion (US$1.08 billion). In return, it would have sold an eight per cent stake in the league’s media rights business.

However, the DFL announced last week that it would abandon plans to bring in private investment, largely because of fan protests that have caused disruption to matches across the country.

While some fans saw a deal as a threat to German soccer’s ‘50+1 rule’, which ensures fans have more say in the running of clubs than any other entity, Watzke insists at a media roundtable that the DFL’s deal would not have given any investor control over the league’s operations.

“Germans are traditional, perhaps a little bit old-fashioned” Watzke said. “In Germany, investor is not the best word.

“Our contract with the investor had clear red points, and that nothing would happen that would negatively impact fans, but the problem was that the fans did not believe us.

“It’s actually a problem of German society, because every idea you tell to the public, the public says ‘not good’.”

Watzke believes the protests were not representative of the views held by most German soccer fans.

“Five per cent of the fans, which is not so much, represented the organised fans and they were against it [investment],” he continues. “The normal fans, they had no problem but did not tell this to everybody.

“It was maybe 500 or 800 in the stadium, but those organised fans had a clear position – no investor.

“As the boss of the Bundesliga, I always had a feeling that a clear majority of the clubs were positive about the process, but in the last week my feeling changed, because more and more clubs were under pressure from the organised fans.

“When I recognised that the majority was not there, I said we must stop it.”

Watzke said that the deal’s collapse would hit mid-sized Bundesliga clubs hardest, rather than Bayern Munich or Dortmund, as the €1 billion (US$1.08 billion) would have helped the wider competition grow.

“Bayern and Dortmund will make their own way if it’s necessary”, Watzke added.

Watzke’s comments came after he announced Dortmund will open an office in New York. The 64-year-old hopes to double the club’s sponsorship revenue from the Americas.

Asked by SportsPro about the importance of establishing a presence in North America, Watzke said more Bundesliga clubs need to do more to follow in the footsteps of Bayern and Dortmund. He added that some of the money from the investment deal would have gone towards creating a pre-season tournament comprising four Bundesliga clubs nearly every year.

“It’s a little bit more of a problem to do this because now we have no investor, but we will try to look at other ways,” he said.

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