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June 13, 2016

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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views

Better late than never, German football club aims to score points with Chinese fans

By Ni Tao | June 13, 2016, Monday | Print Edition

SECTIONS of Shanghai Stadium will resemble the iconic “Yellow Wall” at Signal Iduna Park, the home stadium of German football club Borussia Dortmund when fans salute their beloved team in a friendly scheduled for July.

Invited to play the International Champions Cup in China for the first time, the Bundesliga side will kick off the tournament with a match against Manchester United on July 22, and then fly to the southern city of Shenzhen to take on Manchester City on July 28.

In an exclusive interview, Carsten Cramer, director of sales and marketing at Borussia Dortmund (also known as BVB), told Shanghai Daily that “The ICC matchmakers wouldn’t invite us if they were not convinced that we are attractive in China.”

BVB, which finished second in the 2015-2016 season, has acquired a large following in China thanks to its recent success in the Bundesliga and UEFA Champions League, as well as to the charisma of star players like Marco Reus and former coach Juergen Klopp.

A relative latecomer to the Chinese market, the club is eager to lift its profile in China, beginning with its ICC debut, said Cramer.

Instead of competing head-on with more established clubs like the Red Devils, BVB’s strategy is focused on a “race against ourselves,” as it gears up to tap a market expected to be worth 2 trillion yuan (US$304 billion) in 2025. He added that Dortmund is now in good financial health, free of debt, with revenues doubling to a whopping 300 million euros in the 2014-2015 season.

But despite recent signings like Sebastian Rode from Bayern Munich and Marc Bartra from Barcelona, the club has struggled to retain key players. BVB’s title challenge appears especially precarious with the recent loss of Mats Hummels to Bayern Munich and Ilkay Gundogan to Manchester City. More unsettling are rumors that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, the club’s top scorer who netted 25 goals last season, is on the radar of bigger clubs like Real Madrid and Manchester City. And winger Henrikh Mkhitaryan is also tipped for a move to Arsenal or Juventus.

While Dortmund will try to hold onto these stars, Cramer said the club’s philosophy doesn’t revolve around a single player. It certainly helps to have “famous faces” and “celebrities,” “but we at BVB are keen to stress (that) the club is more important than any individual player.

“In the 107-year history of BVB, anyone is just a representative. Even I, for one, can be substituted,” said the 47-year-old.

Dortmund have so far missed out on the recent frenzy of some European clubs to partner with their Chinese counterparts in training young players, although the German side is renowned for the quality of its youth academy, with big names such as Reus and Mario Goetze counting amongst the ranks of its best alumni.

Instead of running joint youth academy projects, Dortmund’s current focus is on spreading the “black and yellow DNA of BVB” among Chinese children as part of its strategy to broaden its fan base. “Creating superstars is not the primary objective,” said Cramer.

Conceding that the club has yet to increase its commercial representation in China, where fans often complain about the difficulty of buying BVB products from either online vendors or brick-and-mortar stores, Cramer said talks are underway with a major Chinese e-commerce platform (which he declined to name) and a deal is expected to be struck soon to enrich the line-up of BVB merchandise available in China.

Aware of the importance of maintaining social media “stickiness,” Dortmund are looking to open official WeChat and Youku accounts to interact with local fans. It will also continue to operate its existing Sina Weibo service, which started in 2014 and has about 720,000 followers.

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