Guest Post: Jan C. Rode is the “Der Medienlotse” and lives in Hamburg, Germany.  He is a big fan of Hannover 96 and  helps his clients to understand new media potentials. Jan works as a digital consultant, journalist and lecturer in the sport biz.

When thinking of the German Bundesliga, football fans might come to the conclusion that the Germans rule the world. In May, London was flooded in yellow, black and red when Dortmund and Munich battled for the Champions League title in style. And Europe’s Footballer of the Year – the French ‘L’enfant terrible’ Franck Ribery – also plays for a German club. But when it comes to turnover and digital activities, the Bundesliga still trails the pack. This might be connected to the love-hate relationship the Germans have been enjoying with social media and the internet. And although its not exactly virgin soil for the professional clubs, there is still much untapped digital potential.

Not surprisingly, Bayern Munich leads the digital pack. The Bavarians not only have one of the best homepages of the Bundesliga when it comes to technical status and performance, but also feature most of their squad on Facebook. Their 22 players have gathered over 10 million likes, whereas Ron-Robert Zieler  – one of Germany’s many national keepers – is the only player of Hannover 96 with a Facebook profile and a mere 29.000 likes. But these facts cannot be entirely attached to the digital performance of the clubs and is more or less related to the status of the players and their personal management.

Twitter is a completely different story in Germany. Bayern Munich only joined the service last year, but has already overtaken Dortmund, who have been active since 2010 (700.000 vs 600.000 followers). Hoffenheim remains the only club without an active Twitter account. The neglected use of Twitter is obviously related to the lack of control opportunities. As Goldmedia has shown, both Dortmund and Munich were only directly involved in roughly 1% of the tweets about the clubs in the run-up to the final in London between March and May. Most clubs even administer their live ticker during matches much faster than the Twitter feed.

Another example for the different mindset towards all digital in Germany is Club TV. After the termination of the global contract for the Bundesliga with telco giants Telekom in 2012, the clubs have switched their feed into a paid channel. Most fans are still reluctant to pay for highlights of the latest press conference, and clubs haven’t yet figured out how to turn the whole thing into a 24hr channel without losing to much money or rousing the Bundesliga governing body, Deutsche Fußball-Liga (DFL). All eyes are now set on Leverkusen, who are about to open their WLAN-able ground after the winter break in January. If the business case is proved, it is said that most clubs of the Bundesliga will follow within the next two to three years.

Although the Bundesliga reclaimed the top spot in Europe, attracts the biggest crowds and scores the most goals on average, the English Premier League still is way ahead when it comes to turnover. The big gap in marketing to foreign territories is a testament to the marketing of the Premier League, and cannot only explained with the fact that the English invented football and have a longer tradition. New target groups in Asia or South America are used to following their team online – but the Bundesliga isn’t bursting with brilliant or creative content. Instead, channels may be seen as a technical exercise – much like their engineer counterparts at Audi, Volkswagen or BMW the Bundesliga sticks to the claim “Vorsprung durch Technik”- because all channels are up to date when it comes to security and privacy.