Record turnover in year without silverware

Bayern will end the 2006-7 campaign without a trophy, but the season will still enter the record books for boasting the club’s best-ever financial performance, chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has announced. “We posted record turnover of €200 million [US$ 272 million] in 2005-6, and we’ve boosted that by ten percent to €220 million [US$ 299 million] this year. Our profits are set to increase by more than 100 percent, so Bayern Munich football club is in a healthy financial position,” Rummenigge declared in an interview with the Welt am Sonntag Sunday broadsheet.

The club will make use of its excellent cash position over the summer as the board undertakes a radical restructuring of the playing side of the business. In the search for new star signings “we’ll have to invest enormous sums of money,” the chairman informed Pay-TV station Premiere on Saturday. “Clubs with an international perspective like ourselves have to contend with some very interesting prices.”

UEFA Cup offers potential

According to Rummenigge, Bayern’s failure to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in a decade need not dramatically affect the club’s turnover prospects. The side finishing third in the Bundesliga would normally expect to earn around €19.5 million from Europe’s elite club competition, but that was also a realistic target from a successful UEFA Cup run.

“The point is that we retain our own TV rights in the UEFA Cup,” Rummenigge explained. “TV stations fall over themselves to acquire exclusive broadcasting rights for games involving Bayern Munich.” Naturally, there were downsides too, as Rummenigge freely admitted: “More than anything else, it hurts our image. The Champions League is unquestionably the gold standard.”