Everybody loves Werder Bremen

By: Jan | June 22nd, 2007

Werder Bremen At least according to the sports marketing company Sportfive. Sportfive conducted a little survey and asked 2000 people in Germany how they felt about football and Bundesliga clubs in particular. They upsampled the results to reflect the whole German population and presented them in their study Fussballstudie 2007. Here are some of their findings:

76% of the German population(*) are interested in football which translates to 49,21 million people. When asked about the clubs they sympathise with, they gave the following answer (multiple answers were permitted):

Sympathy Table

1. Bremen 27,51 Million
2. Schalke 22,26 Million
3. Bayern Munich 21,92 Million
4. Hamburg 18,43 Million
5. Dortmund 17,21 Million
6. Stuttgart 17,08 Million
7. Nuremberg 13,37 Million
8. Mainz 12,89 Million
9. Leverkusen 12,19 Million
10. Gladbach 12,15 Million
11. Berlin 11,65 Million
12. Bochum 10,96 Million
13. Frankfurt 10,58 Million
14. Hannover 9,08 Million
15. Cottbus 7,77 Million
16. Aachen 7,64 Million
17. Wolfsburg 6,85 Million
18. Bielefeld 6,10 Million

First of all I want to pat myself on the back for my successful albeit a bit lucky display of football culture expertise. Look who is ranked 17th and 18th here and read what I wrote here. Anyway, congratulations Werder Bremen, you might have only made it to the third place last season but won the Champion of the Hearts award, that was originally invented for Schalke fans who needed comfort after yet another unsuccessful Bundesliga title race. And Bremen has actually tripled the number of their sympathisers over the last five years. Out of fairness I should mention that Sportfive is marketing Werder Bremen and a couple of other Bundesliga clubs. I should probably also point out that they conducted the study over a period of 18 days at two points in time last year. CATI: 8th to 26th of May 2006. Face to Face: 20th of November to 8th of December 2006. So the study doesn’t reflect how the season played out in the end. Probably wouldn’t dramatically change the results except for let’s say Stuttgart on position 6. But results that look ridiculously outdated by now are the following:

Best player: 1. Miroslav Klose 33%
Best coach: 1. Felix Magath, 2. Thomas Schaaf, 3. Jürgen Klopp, 4. Hans Meyer, 5. Klaus Augenthaler

No Mirko Slomka, no Armin Veh, Felix Magath on top and what is Klaus Augenthaler doing there? Things they are a-changin’. But great to see that Hans Meyer (Nuremberg) is already on the list.

Something that is probably less susceptible to day to day moods and business is the question which club people support.

1. Bayern Munich 10,54 Million
2. Bremen 5,68 Million
3. Schalke 04 4,31 Million
4. Dortmund 3,15 Million
5. Hamburg 2,68 Million

8,19 million Germans are fans of a foreign club instead, while 13,70 million are undecided. The top 5 foreign clubs:

1. FC Barcelona 2,26 Million
2. FC Chelsea 1,49 Million
3. Real Madrid 1,36 Million
4. Manchester United 1,28 Million
5. Liverpool 1,12 Million

Very clear victory for Bayern Munich here. Although I have to say that as a kid/teenager I always hated those guys in my class that were Bayern Munich supporters. I respected those who chose a local club or if it had to be Munich could at least prove that they are from Bavaria or something like that. But the majority were really just superficial wannabe fans who pick the most successful club because they can’t stand losing. And yes I was jealous and I was disappointed by my own in retrospect painful choice to support Cologne.

(*) that’s not the official 82 million people population number you might find in a Wikipedia article, but 65 million people who are at least 14 years old.

(Sources: 1 2 3)