The Bayer Leverkusen story was the talk of the 2023-24 European soccer season, with all eyes fixated on the German team for their incredible exploits.
Ending Bayern Munich’s run of 11 successive top-tier men's Bundesliga titles, and doing so unbeaten, to become the Deutsche Meister for the first time in their history, was something even the most avid Bayer 04 fan couldn’t have dreamed of.
Indeed, Bayer became the first team to complete an entire Bundesliga season without defeat after a remarkable campaign that also saw the club set a European record of 51 games in a row without loss across all competitions.
They fell just one game short of going an entire season undefeated across all competitions when they were beaten by Atalanta in the UEFA Europa League final.
Still, a league and cup double without a loss domestically was a truly unthinkable achievement for a Bayer side that hadn’t lifted any silverware since the DFB-Pokal in 1993.
The team finally shed the ‘Neverkusen’ (or Vizekusen in German) tag that stuck since the early 2000s when they were runners-up in both the Bundesliga and the Champions League final at the start of the millennium.
Bayer’s 2023-24 fairytale run saw them earn new fans along the way as they became many people’s second favorite team.
Their success on the pitch drew in a new audience and it’s now the task of the club’s hierarchy to maximize that reach and continue a steady trend.
“Everyone looks at last season, but if you analyze our numbers in terms of followers, reach, and fan base over the last years, it was already growing before,” Bayer chief executive Fernando Carro told international media, including Sportcal, at the recent German Super Cup.
“In 2022-23, we reached the semi-finals of the Europa League, so we have been trying to prepare the club for the next steps…
“The growth, or certainly the preparation for growth and success, was there, but of course, the immense success of 51 undefeated games shows as well our limitations. We have to re-adjust and re-adapt.”
The main limitation in question for Carro is the size of their stadium. The team has one of the smaller grounds in the Bundesliga at a capacity of just over 30,000.
The long-term ambition of the club’s CEO, who has been in charge since July 2018, is to build a bigger home.
“The one thing that is a limitation and frustrating for me is that we would need a 50,000 stadium, and then I would feel comfortable to be able to accommodate everyone that wants to see us,” he says.
“But I know it's very difficult to build in Germany, it's out of our reach at the moment.
“90% of our reach online is outside Germany but it's very important not to lose the base at home in Leverkusen. 150,000 people are living in Leverkusen, and we could have 50,000 season tickets. We are grabbing this opportunity now and are looking at doing other things to really take advantage.”
With Bayer back in the UEFA Champions League this season, the club are keen to rub shoulders with Europe’s elite regularly but competing financially with teams that have stadiums two or three times the size of the BayArena is a tough ask.
Even in Germany, 10 of the 18 Bundesliga teams have bigger stadiums than Bayer.
Asked if the club has outgrown the BayArena, Carro replies: “We are looking into the possibility of making changes in the stadium to increase the capacity, but this is going to be very expensive and difficult.
“Still, it's my responsibility as CEO to analyse it. But this will take time. Next season, we will analyse it. This is not something I've discussed yet with Werner Wenning, who is the head of the supervisory board and represents the shareholders.”
Sponsor demand
As well as increased ticket sales and matchday revenue, a larger venue would attract more sponsorship opportunities, another area Carro is keen to strengthen.
The problem for Bayer and Sportfive, the agency responsible for selling the club’s commercial rights, is meeting sponsorship demand.
With the rise of virtual advertising inside stadiums, this is one particular asset brands are increasingly keen to benefit from during matches.
This forced Bayer to get creative and last season the club enhanced this offering by becoming the first club in the Bundesliga to use parallel ads technology (PADS) during television broadcasts of their home matches to target more global sponsors.
Provided by sports infrastructure, technology, and media rights business TGI Sport, the system enabled the club to show different advertising partners on the LED printer screens at the BayArena on national and international TV after receiving specific permission from the German Football League (DFL).
Bayer matches feature an international feed with parallel advertising in addition to the existing feed for the domestic DACH target region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland).
The Bundesliga champions first installed the LED perimeter screens at their stadium in 2019.
“One important thing for us is to expand our resources and one key area of focus is sponsorships,” Carro explains. “Therefore, we are trying to expand that and have a better base for the future.
“We are limited right now as we could sell much more through billboard advertising and much bigger sponsorships, and they [sponsors] want to have more exposure but there are limits to what we can offer.”
Bayer have announced several sponsorship deals in recent weeks, most notably an expanded agreement with MG Motor, with the vehicle brand upgrading to become a premium partner of the club after just eight months.
The premium partner designation is the second tier of the club’s sponsorship category - below pharmaceutical heavyweight Bayer AG, which fully owns the team (one of the rare examples of a Bundesliga side being exempt from the famous 50+1 rule in which a club is required to be majority-owned by its fans and members).
The move by MG Motor, which will give it additional brand exposure inside the BayArena among other assets, is a clear indication of the club’s new commercial pull after their unprecedented season.
After the hugely successful year, Bayer could also have capitalised commercially by going abroad for a pre-season tour and increasing fan engagement in key target markets.
However, unlike many of Europe’s top clubs, they opted against an international trip.
With several players competing at the UEFA Euro 2024 and Copa America national team competitions over the summer, the club had to make a strategic decision to balance commercialization with performance on the pitch.
Explaining the club’s decision to not go on a pre-season tour, Carro said: “This is something that we discussed a lot internally in the club and, to be very honest, there were different opinions on that.
“At the end, as CEO, you have to make decisions. You must try to find a balance and make everyone understand why we do certain things. We have contributed much more to the Bundesliga brand and growing the Bundesliga by what we achieved sportingly last year than by doing a global trip.
“I know that a lot of fans, sponsors and organizers of matches would have liked to see us, but at the end of the day, we have to make our decisions for ourselves. It was not an easy decision but was a clear decision.”
Bayer will undoubtedly see a significant growth in revenue from last season, with income from the 2023-24 campaign likely to top the €273 million ($230.3 million) figure from 2022-23.
The team’s total sponsorship revenue for the 2022-23 season was over $57.7 million, with the biggest single investment coming from Bayer AG, an agreement valued at $30 million per year.
However, these numbers are considerably less than other Bundesliga rivals such as Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund and some of the bigger clubs on the continent.
The Bundesliga has sought to help its clubs grow financially and was keen on bringing in outside investment through a strategic marketing partnership.
But despite being voted through by clubs at the second time of asking, the league was again forced to scrap the plan following mass fan protests.
The proposal would have seen an investment firm pay around €1 billion for a share of up to 8% in the broadcast rights of the Bundesliga and second-tier 2.Bundesliga over 20 years, similar to deals secured by Spain’s LaLiga and France’s Ligue 1 with CVC in recent years.
As well as distributing funds to clubs, the DFL had been aiming to use the investment and presence of a major financial backer to springboard the Bundesliga to a more lucrative broadcast deal to keep it in step with the English Premier League and other top European competitions.
The league had hoped to use 40% of the generated revenue for digitalization and 45% to improve the infrastructure of the 36 teams. The remaining 15% would have been free for use by the individual clubs.
A majority of the DFL’s supervisory board had voted in favor of seeking out a new strategic marketing partnership last November. Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga clubs then supported the idea in December, with 24 out of 36 clubs voting it through, including Bayer.
“It was a missed opportunity, but we have to accept the reality in German football,” Carro says.
“I'm part of it, I have to criticize myself and the whole league in the reality that we were not successful in getting it through for different reasons.
“We must look for other ways of getting investments and money that we need and try to be creative in finding other ways of generating resources to grow the league and this is a collective effort of all the clubs.”
