Ramble Meets... Robert Klein
Football Ramble
Stak Production
4.6 • 9.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2019
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s Ramble Meets… Andy Brassell sits down with Robert Klein, the CEO of Bundesliga International. Robert is responsible for promoting the Bundesliga brand and its football following to a wider audience.
With Robert promoting a style of football he believes to be a combination of Premier League physicality and Spanish technicality, Bundesliga International have been setting up local offices in worldwide markets to appeal to brand new audiences. He sits down with Andy in this insightful interview to discuss how the Bundesliga’s commercial style differs from the Premier League, the immense international profiles of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund and young British players broadening their horizons while playing in Germany.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Robert Klein, I am CEO of Bundesliga International and a big fan of football as it's meant to be. |
| 0:11.2 | Thanks for joining us here, Robert. We're going to talk about your role as CEO of Bundesliga |
| 0:18.8 | International, which it was surprising to me was only set up in 2017. I mean, it's clear that the |
| 0:25.0 | Bundesliga for a while has had its eyes on spreading the word. You set up in an office or the |
| 0:31.7 | Bundesliga set up in office in Singapore in 2012. So I guess my first question is what was the |
| 0:38.5 | tipping point leading to the creation of this international arm of the Bundesliga so recently? |
| 0:47.5 | So the predecessor of Bundesliga International was DFL Sports Enterprise and that was primarily |
| 0:54.2 | a media rights business. So we've been selling rights internationally since 2008. |
| 1:00.8 | But we realized that the international appetite for Bundesliga, the potential required a specific focus |
| 1:09.7 | and that is why Bundesliga International was created as its own entity in 2017 focused solely, |
| 1:16.9 | as the company name says, on international business. Importantly as well, media rights, of course, |
| 1:22.9 | is the big revenue driver. But we needed to build up a team and expertise in the areas of event |
| 1:30.6 | marketing, club relationships, digital PR, business intelligence so that we could actually approach all |
| 1:38.2 | of our key markets in a credible and modern fashion, I would say. And then on top of that, what was |
| 1:46.2 | important for us is we absolutely believe and I believe have done a lot of international |
| 1:50.5 | business that you need to be on the ground. You need to be where your fans are, you need to be |
| 1:54.2 | where your partners are. So as well as building up the team in the last 18 months, we've opened |
| 1:59.2 | offices in New York for the whole of the Americas in China, which is obviously a huge market for us, |
| 2:04.8 | both partner wise and fan base wise. And we've also got a joint partnership with IMG Reliance in India. |
| 2:13.6 | And clearly the demand for the Bundesliga is absolutely blown up over recent years. I mean, |
| 2:20.5 | Bundesliga revenues have doubled in the last decade. So this was just something that the Bundesliga |
| 2:26.4 | had to do basically. Yes, I think that is exactly why I joined. I think it was something that the |
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