The German Football League (DFL) also benefited from the signing of Sadio Mane by record champions Bayern Munich. This was confirmed by DFL boss Donata Hopfen in the specialist magazine table football.
“Both FC Bayern and we as a league have been able to use the right content in the digital media that Mane’s new world is now Munich and the Bundesliga, and we’ve gained enormous reach in his home country of Africa,” she said: “In On the social networks, we are talking about growth in the four-digit percentage range.”
Hopfen explained that this is a phenomenon that can often be observed in international football at the moment. “International changes have very different effects today than they used to,” said Christian Seifert’s successor: “Many young fans follow superstars, not so much the clubs. With the change from (Erling) Haaland (from Borussia Dortmund, ed.) to Manchester City, they go to England with him on social media.”
With the Senegalese Mane, who came to Munich from Liverpool FC, the effect is the other way around. The fact that Robert Lewandowski (from FC Bayern to FC Barcelona) left the league in addition to Haaland is not a major weakening. “One goes, another comes, many grow up. With Jude Bellingham and Jamal Musiala, two of the greatest talents in the world play with us,” emphasized Hopfen, who described her first ten months as DFL boss as a “wild ride”.
DFL boss demands: “Cut back your own interests”
It “started in times of crisis, and the global political and social problems felt like they were increasing every day,” said Hopfen, listing Corona, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and inflation. In addition, there are the “original issues of football and the DFL, none of which are easy to solve”. All of this would require “an enormous balancing act”.
“My job is to design the strategic lines for the future and, as the DFL, to offer the best possible framework conditions. Everything so that the league remains stable in the years to come,” said Hopfen: “There are many very sensitive issues that have been discussed for years smolder and, despite the different concerns, can only be solved together.” It needs “the willingness of everyone to go along with changes and sometimes certainly to scale back their own interests a bit in the interests of the big picture.”
