Fernando Carro wants to see the German top flight compete more closely with La Liga and the Premier League
The German Bundesliga earns around €270m per season from global TV rights. This figure pales in comparison to the €900 which La Liga generates, and the whopping €2bn per season which the English Premier League brings in.
Statistics like these are troubling for many stakeholders in the German game, including Bayer Leverkusen CEO Fernando Carro. The Spaniard recently gave an interview to Bulinews in which he bemoaned this disparity. He said he seems huge potential for growth for the Bundesliga around the world, and that the league's TV rights are being massively undervalued.
Fernando Carro, CEO of Bayer Leverkusen told Bulinews:
"I believe that our rights are sold under value. If you look at the amount of money we get compared to La Liga and the Premier League, it doesn't reflect the importance of the Bundesliga. All the big clubs in the Bundesliga have to increase their efforts, not only to make their own club known, but to make the Bundesliga more known. That's why Bundesliga clubs are working together with the DFL about increasing the awareness."
There are several theories out there to explain this huge gulf in TV rights revenues between the generally recognised top three leagues in Europe.
One of them is that the Premier League and La Liga have more high-profile big name players, but the most convincing argument points to the domination of Bayern Munich. The Bavarian club sit top of the league again and will likely return from the World Cup break to win an eleventh straight title.
Such domination isn't visible even in some of the smallest leagues in Europe, or in the much maligned French Ligue 1. For the Bundesliga to compete with the Premier League and La Liga, there needs to be at least one genuine contender to their crown. This is the biggest problem for executives at the Bundesliga to solve.
However, Carro doesn't buy into this reasoning, and believes there are much more complicated factors at play.
In his interview with Bulinews, Fernando Carro added:
"We haven't invested enough, and we haven't been very good operationally. I don't like it when people say that it's because we don't have big stars like Messi and Ronaldo or that it's because Bayern are always winning. Of course, these things have an impact, but there are other factors too. We have to work on six or seven things at the same time."
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