German football club Bayern Munich seems to be the latest team looking to expand into the sport’s two emerging markets: China and the USA.

And it’s the US in particular where Munich appear to be looking for expansion. This week, Bayern Munich CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and defender Jerome Boateng talked to CNBC about their club’s expansion in the US.

And it seems as though the top brass at Bayern are clear that it’s in the world of digital media where their race to expand will be won and lost.

“We can learn a lot from other U.S. sports how they are doing their job in digital or in media,” said Rummenigge. “We are not so arrogant [to] believe that we, our way is the one is the most successful…. We have to respect the culture of the market. The culture is different in America than Germany.”

In the US, say CNBC, fans expect their sports stars to be much more active on social media than they are in Europe.

A cursory look on Twitter would show you the kinds of tweets posted by professional footballers. There’s a lot to lose: just ask Andre Gray. And with the stakes so high, top footballers tend to err on the side of caution and banality.

Whilst MLS’s latest Twitter evisceration of Nigel de Jong might be cruel, classless, unnecessary, or all of the above, but perhaps it’s the kind of social media engagement that US audiences enjoy. From a British perspective, all I can say is that it would be astonishing to see the Premier League release a video like that. In the end it’s all about sensitivity to your audience.

The US – and China – is a big audience for football clubs, and one they want to get right. It’s a place with untapped potential for the moment. The popularity and growth of MLS is one factor to prove that football is growing in the States, but the level of performance and quality is both literally and metaphorically an ocean away from that of Europe. Nor does it show any signs of changing in the short to medium term at least. That means European football clubs can penetrate further into the market. Bayern Munich can generate fans who watch MLS to support their local team, but who will also want to support a team in Europe.

If you’re a British Ice Hockey fan, you follow your British team, but you might have a US or Canadian team, too. It just makes sense to follow the best quality leagues, too.

Jerome Boateng told CNBC, “It’s an interesting market. The U.S. is a big country, and Germany is a small country. [Football] is really popular in Germany, and here it is just growing up.”

That makes it fertile ground for media savvy football clubs. Getting it right could prove difficult, however, unless clubs are culturally sensitive – and by the sounds of it, Bayern Munich understand that.