An important topic in club-marketer negotiations with potential new sponsors is obviously the reach the company can achieve with a sponsorship commitment. Of course, the number of members also plays a role. Due to the rise of FC Schalke 04, there are currently five Bundesliga clubs in the top flight, which have more than 100,000 members. The fact that sporting success can generate great desire is not only demonstrated by FC Bayern Munich – as is known, the largest sports club in the world. Eintracht Frankfurt has also generated enormous demand, not least because it has won the UEFA Europa League. The final win against Glasgow Rangers in mid-May 2022 has been followed by over 10,000 new registrations to date. The other members of the “Club of Hundred of Thousands” are Borussia Dortmund from March 2014 and 1. FC Köln since September 2017.
However, the growth rates among members are nowhere near the number of followers Bundesliga clubs have developed on social media. By far the fastest growing platform is Tiktok. For example, Eintracht has increased its number of followers here since the beginning of the year to over 560,000, which corresponds to an increase of over 175%. FC Bayern Munich even saw an increase of over three million followers over the same period and is now at nearly 11 million. FC Augsburg, VfB Stuttgart and VfL Bochum also want to exploit Tiktok’s potential in the future. The three Bundesliga clubs have only recently been active on the short video platform. With 1. FC Union Berlin and SC Freiburg, there are currently only two Bundesliga clubs that don’t have their own channel on Tiktok. The Linkedin commercial network is also at the center of the attention of the Bundesliga clubs, especially from a B2B point of view. FC Bayern were the first club to welcome their 100,000th follower here. The second place is occupied by Borussia Dortmund, followed by about 50,000 people on Linkedin.
Photo: picture alliance / Joaquim Ferreira | Joachim Ferreira
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