The underestimated danger

The clubs should not underestimate the effect of this alienation. It is very possible that the times when you could post permanent attendance records and a “sold out” in the stadiums was more the rule than the exception are over. Football would then also lose the status of the “event” that one had to be present at and thus another point of attraction. For some stadium visitors, the ticket is also a kind of status symbol, with which one can stand out from all those who missed out in advance sales. If the number of available tickets increases, the attractiveness of buying tickets for this clientele decreases. If anyone who wants to can go to the stadium, then the ticket is no longer anything special.

A real danger for the clubs in the long term. Full ranks are the most visible indicator of the importance of football and its attractiveness as an advertising medium. Larger gaps in the stands would immediately be used as an argument for possible sponsors and equipment suppliers in the case of new contracts and lead to falling revenues. This in turn resulted in lower transfer funds below the top ranks of clubs, whose financial resources only partially correlate with the sales situation. The clubs that had already sewn their budgets to the edge before the Corona crisis and are urgently dependent on transfer revenues, would pull the rug out from under their feet.

The Bundesliga clubs would be well advised to correct their cost structure downwards regardless of pandemic-related cuts and to trim them for a future in which the rosy times of constant record reports on TV and sponsorship contracts are over. Instead, one gives the impression of simply muddling through and betting that maybe next season everything will be as it was before. But maybe there is a relatively rude awakening.

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