5 Things You Need to Know About the New Bundesliga Season

By: Jan | August 15th, 2008

The new Bundesliga season is about to kick-off in a few minutes. There are the usual new teams, new coaches and new players to be excited about. There is a lot of football and a few trophies to be excited about. And finally, for the footie nerds, there are also some organisational changes to be excited about and which I will cover in this post.

1. Relegation Play-Offs
Starting this season, the 16th placed team of the Bundesliga will face the 3rd placed team of the 2nd Bundesliga in a two-legged knock-out tie. This will make the Bundesliga a marginally safer place.

More important though: the same rule applies to the 2nd Bundesliga and the newly formed 3rd Liga. In previous seasons four 2nd Bundesliga teams were relegated, and two teams each from the Regionalliga North and South were promoted. With the unified 3rd Liga in place, a three-team relegation format has been adopted here as well. Thus the 2nd Bundesliga has become a much safer place. This is good news for the long term economic development of some second division sides.

2. No Intertoto Cup
VfB Stuttgart will have been the last club to play out embarrassing and unconvincing Intertoto Cup ties. The UEFA has reformed the UEFA Cup and replaced the Intertoto Cup with new UEFA Cup qualification rounds.

I don’t know whether the Intertoto Cup spot will be converted into an additional UEFA Cup spot or not though. Anyone?

3. Live in 172 Countries
Last season’s record of 171 countries broadcasting live Bundesliga matches has been beaten. Bayern Munich vs. Hamburg will be broadcast live in 172 countries. According to Bundesliga Offside internal research conducted by our regular reader Diana (Happy Birthday BTW!), the 172nd country is Singapore.

If I were Uli Hoeness, I would convert the potential reach into actual viewers (NFL and EPL style), and brag how Bayern vs. Hamburg is bigger than the Superbowl.

4. Up to three Sunday Fixtures
The DFL has brokered a deal with TV networks, allowing them to schedule a third match on Sunday, in case there’s a conflict with UEFA Cup matches played out on Thursday. I.e.: no more 48h per match grinds.

Although, with Hertha having picked up an extra UEFA Cup spot and with Schalke still potentially dropping down to the UEFA Cup, even three Sunday fixtures might not to be enough.

5. More DFB-Pokal price money
An agreement was reached with pay-TV network Premiere, who will broadcast all 63 matches of the DFB-Pokal live, for the first time in the competition’s history – previously there had been one or two live matches on free-to-air TV only. The extra money coming from Premiere has bumped the price money a team receives for each round:

1st Round: €97942 (+82%)
2nd Round: €227133 (+100%)
3rd Round: €454267 (+88%)
Quarter-Final: €908533 (+61%)
Semi-Final: €1567067 (+72%)
Losing Finalist: €1707307 (+33%)
Cup Winner: €2560960 (+50%)

The increases in the early rounds are particularly important to teams from lower divisions (3rd division downwards). A Bundesliga side enjoying a successful cup campaign can look forward to €5-6m in price money. Combined with sponsorship and matchday revenue this figure could increase to €10m + x.