HalfSpaces Bundesliga “Fixing” the Bundesliga with an American Twist

“Fixing” the Bundesliga with an American Twist



The Bundesliga is my favorite soccer league to watch. Lots of interesting young American players to watch, awesome fan culture, tactically astute young coaches everywhere…it’s got a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it’s also mind-numbingly predictable.

Bayern Munich have won the last eight Bundesliga championships in a row and 29 total. For reference, the rest of the teams that have played in the Bundesliga have won it 28 times. The individual games within the league are still fun to watch, but there is next to no championship drama in the league.

The NFL is the most successful professional league in the US by a mile. Part of the reason is that there’s always hope that your team can turn it around and win the Super Bowl rather quickly. I’m a Lions fan. I should know better, but I still think every year that if things go right we could make a run. If we luck out on a coach/quarterback combo there might even be a sustained period of winning in the cards. If you’re a Freiburg FC fan you harbor no such illusions.

Can anything be done about Bayern’s dominance?

Even out the Money

TV Money

You can’t completely fix this and I’m not sure that it would be a good thing anyway…but you can even it out some. Here’s the revenue of the top ten Bundesliga clubs from 2019:

One of the things (imo) American leagues do right is split the money up equally. I grew up in Detroit – hence the Lion’s fan thing. Even though my team is terrible and hasn’t won a playoff game since 1994, we get the same amount of TV dollars as the New England Patriots.

This year, Bayern received about 68 million in international TV money while Paderborn (who finished dead last) received about 26 million. An easy adjustment to make would be to divide that money by 18 and give each team approx. 50 million. That certainly wouldn’t close the gap between Paderborn and Bayern, but an extra 24 million Euros would definitely get you a couple quality players, a stadium improvement, a nicer academy, etc.

Here’s how the Bundesliga TV money is split up if you’re curious:

Ticket Money

In 2018-2019 Bayern made about 100 million Euros in match day revenue while even a team like Dortmund (who has stadium 5,000 seats larger btw) “only” pulled in about 60 million. A completely equitable sharing plan would not be as feasible as it is in the US where most teams have roughly equal seating capacities.

If the teams kept 75% of their ticket money and pooled the other 25% to be distributed equally it would still reward the bigger clubs while helping out the smaller. These two changes would be a drop in the bucket for Bayern, but would have made a world of difference for a team like Paderborn that has an annual revenue of about 12 million Euros.

Player Distribution (aka – a Draft)

This is more difficult in Europe. In American leagues, the lower placed teams get assistance in the form of higher draft picks. If you land LeBron James on your NBA team that can be enough to turn your fortunes around in one bounce of a ping pong ball. There can be no entry draft like that, but what about a player re-distribution draft?

The academies at places like Bayern are full of players that are talented enough to play in the Bundesliga, but rarely get a shot because they just go out and buy players that are already stars. In this system, Bundesliga teams that qualify for Europe would lose one young player (18+) that is not a regular member of their Bundesliga squad.

The three promoted teams and teams 13-16 would each get to “draft” one youth player from the European eligible Bundesliga sides (each team could only lose one player). I’m sure there’s contractual stuff that would have to be addressed, but it would help prevent the big teams from hoarding young, Bundesliga ready talent and give these struggling teams a good player or at least a valuable asset.

Plus, drafts are awesome. Can you imagine how excited the fan bases of those bottom teams would be in the days leading up to the “draft?”

Bundesliga “Bird” Rights

In the NBA, the team the player is a current member of is always able to offer more money than other teams in the league. The DfB (German FA) is flush with cash from the Pokal, international matches, and I believe the Bundesliga clubs contribute (I couldn’t find confirmation of that). Bundesliga teams would be able to designate one player per team and have the DfB pay their salary. That way if a player would like to stay but is offered large pay increase they wouldn’t have to leave.

There may be a player that breaks through at Augsburg and is perfectly happy there, but would have to be crazy to turn down having their salary tripled by Bayern or some Premier League team. This would allow teams to keep players they may otherwise have lost.

The Future

The only one of these things that I could possibly see being realistic is the sharing of TV revenue. Even if you did all of these things Bayern Munich is still going to win more than their fair share of Bundesliga titles. But I like the Bundesliga too much to pretend nothing needs to change. Something needs to be done so I thought I’d throw a couple crazy ideas out there. Hopefully there are smarter people than me at the DfB that are working on possible changes.

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1 thought on ““Fixing” the Bundesliga with an American Twist”

  1. Some good thoughts here. How about “No free transfers up the table.” Dortmund getting nothing for Lewandowski when he moved to Bayern has been a huge reason Dortmund has not caught them at least once these past few seasons. You wanna go, that’s fine, but make the team do a sign-and-trade equivalent are least for cash if not players.

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