December 19 – FC Bayern’s Digital & Media Lab has expanded its business with three new long term partnerships with Swiss club FC Basel, Austria’s FK Austria Wien and Bundesliga 2 club Dynamo Dresden.
The deal will see the media subsidiary of Bayern Munich cover infrastructure, back-end systems and hosting.
Bernhard Burgener (pictured left), president of 20 times Swiss champions FC Basel 1893, said: “One of our aims was to enter partnerships with top clubs in Europe. The fact that it’s FC Bayern, who I regard very highly, pleases me greatly. It’s the start of a partnership with one of the most successful football clubs in the world.”
Bayern Digital & Media Lab came out of the ‘FC Bayern Digital 4.0’ project which oversaw a radical digital transformation of the German giants. 52 different, incompatible systems were replaced by a single, unified software and IT infrastructure. A data centre was commissioned in autumn 2016 as well as the launch of proprietary front-end and back-end systems.
It is this digital platform that the Bayern Digital & Media Lab has now made available to the wider football club market, along with a suite of digital services.
Bayern München AG chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (pictured right) said: “We’re delighted that three well-known and traditional clubs are counting on our know-how and have put their faith in us.”
Markus Kraetschmer, CEO of 24 times Austrian champions FK Austria Wien, said: “For Austria Wien, digitalisation is a central theme going forward. We want to make our club a tangible experience, enthuse our existing supporters and attract new ones. However, the basic prerequisite for this is that we act in a forward-looking manner in order to keep up with fast-paced development of the market. The partnership with Bayern is the next big step in that direction.”
The Bayern platform gives the clubs a digital scale they would not otherwise be able to afford to build on their own. Michael Born, commercial manager of Dynamo Dresden: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the first, second or fourth league, whether you’re a professional or amateur club: you can’t get anywhere today without digitalisation. We’re investing in the future and will take our fans on this journey with us.”
Bayern’s digital platform was launched in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom AG and SAP.
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