German Bundesliga football club Bayern Munich has formed a digital and media subsidiary in an effort to further expand its “pioneering” work in these areas, while it has also signed a content partnership with US sports broadcaster ESPN.
FCB Digital & Media Lab will launch for the start of the 2018-19 season and will be chaired by Stefan Mennerich, Bayern’s director of media, digital and communications.
Mennerich said: “With the FCB Digital & Media Lab we want to further expand our enormous media coverage. As a result, we can also support our internationalisation and generate additional revenues in the areas of media, merchandising and sponsoring. In addition, we will also offer our infrastructure and our know-how as a service to third parties on the market.
“The basis of our work is always the content that we produce and offer with our teams worldwide. In this way, we can bring our team, our tradition and our brand to life around the world, inspire fans of FC Bayern and win new ones.”
Meanwhile, ESPN has reached an agreement with Bayern for rights to use and share content directly from the club across its digital and linear platforms.
Through this agreement, Bayern will make available its content – behind-the-scenes video, access-driven features, pre- and post-match reports, press briefings, team travelogue, and more – for use across ESPN programs in the United States, Canada, throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Video from Bayern Munich will be available on ESPN’s English-language studio programs, digital and social media platforms, such as SportsCenter; ESPN FC, the daily global football news, information and analysis program available in the US on the company’s leading digital platforms, including the new ESPN+ streaming service, the ESPN App and ESPN.com.
ESPN Spanish-language programs including SportsCenter, Fuera de Juego, Jorge Ramos y su Banda, Fútbol Picante, Los Capitanes, Nación ESPN, and more, will also have access to the video content created by Bayern for Spanish-speaking fans in the US and throughout Latin America.