The 46th Bundesliga season kicks off this weekend amid an as yet unsettled row about TV rights, reports Raphael Honigstein. The German Competition Commission looked into the league’s six-year, $4 billion deal running from 2009-2015 and found it “unacceptable,” concluding that centralized marketing was a de facto cartel, and that a free-to-air highlights program must be shown before 8pm on Saturdays, a long-standing German tradition.
If the league is ultimately forced to accept this, it will be at the expense of pay-per-view provider Premiere, and will naturally decrease the value of the league’s TV rights. It may even lead to club’s negotiating their rights individually, rather than collectively, and the team that would profit most, inevitably, is Bayern Munich. The reigning title holder is, under new coach Juergen Klinsmann, already the next champion-in-waiting.
The main question is not whether Bayern will lift the Bundesliga shield, but how will they play under Klinsmann, and will it be to the satisfaction of its notoriously critical henchmen Uli Hoeness, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Franz Beckenbauer. The likeliest competitors will be Werder Bremen, Schalke 04 and SV Hamburg, but the usual scenario is for them to end up defeating each other and letting the Bavarians through. Although Bayern is the only team with the players and the resources to mount a decent Champions League campaign, the rest of Germany will continue to cheer on anyone who plays them, at home or abroad.
There’s been a lack of notable transfer activity this summer, says Honigstein. Bayern bought national team midfielder Tim Borowski from Bremen, but failed to land Mathieu Flamini, Gennaro Gattuso or VfB Stuttgart’s striker Mario Gomez. Hamburg is smarting from midfielder Rafael van der Vaart’s move to Real Madrid, while Schalke’s new Dutch coach, Fred Rutten, has brought Orlando Engelaar along for the ride from their former club FC Twente Enschede.
“Schalke will, in all likelihood, make it 50 years without a championship this season,” says Honigstein, while pointing out they should be still be a “useful side.” Bremen needs at least one more good striker to be serious contenders, while both Stuttgart and Felix Magath’s Wolfsburg will push for a Champions League place. The biggest story will be the remarkable rise of TSG 1899 Hoffenheim. Hoffenheim’s population is 3,300, but 13,300 have bought season-tickets. Billionaire Dietmar Hopp has backed the team through six promotions, and now “Ralf Rangnick’s side have already started to frighten the established order with some smart Brazilian buys and a youth academy system modeled on Arsenal.”
A village side winning the Bundesliga? It sounds like JL Carr’s famous book ‘How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup.’ Except that was fiction.
U.S players currently under contract with Bundesliga teams:
Neven Subotic (Borussia Dortmund)
Steve Cherundolo (Hannover 96)
Sal Zizzo (Hannover 96)
Preston Zimmerman (SV Hamburg)
Kamani Hill (VfL Wolfsburg)
Bryan Arguez (Hertha Berlin)