RB Leipzig Managing Director Johann Plenge, who has been with the club since it was in the fifth tier of German soccer, has opened up about the possibility of Bundesliga clubs playing league games abroad in a revealing new interview. Ask any fan of a Bundesliga club which league is most likely to play league […]

RB Leipzig Managing Director Johann Plenge, who has been with the club since it was in the fifth tier of German soccer, has opened up about the possibility of Bundesliga clubs playing league games abroad in a revealing new interview.

Ask any fan of a Bundesliga club which league is most likely to play league games abroad, and the guaranteed answer is either La Liga, Premier League, or both. Mention the Bundesliga in that same conversation, and you’ll get an avalanche of reasons why the German league will never play overseas.

So, when the 39-year-old RB Leipzig executive addressed the topic last week, Plenge told World Soccer Talk, “I don’t see it [happening] in the near future, no.”

However, he didn’t rule it out from happening in the long term.

He said, “Never say no to anything. In the end, this is important, football has to develop its product the way the fans would like to have it. The fan is in the center of everything, and if the majority of the fans would like to adopt a format, or talk about where cup finals should take place, these are discussions you would have to be open for.”

Bundesliga playing overseas? More work needs to be done first

Plenge prefaced the surprise comment by mentioning all of the steps that need to happen before the possibility of playing games overseas.

“For us in Germany, [having games played overseas] is not a discussion we need to have at the moment. We have to have easier discussions such as how we can improve our product, strengthen the relationship with foreign broadcasters, etc. I think this is three, four, or five steps too far [ahead], but we should focus on the next immediate steps first. [For example], the tender of the Bundesliga is currently running.

“So we have to do our homework first there before we can talk about having Bundesliga matches somewhere out of Germany or even out of Europe.”

Plenge’s frank comments received some pushback from reporters.

Plenge reiterated, “I think [playing games overseas] should not be the discussion we’re having next season or the next two, three or four years. How performance will look like in ten or fifteen years, I would leave it up to the fans about how they would like to have it. The Bundesliga has to structure the competition the way the fans want it.

“We would not say categorically no to whatever the fans would like to have the structure and location of where to play Bundesliga matches.”

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Bundesliga’s next international media rights deal

A telltale sign of where the Bundesliga’s head is at is the recent signing of a deal with Relevent Sports, the agency that is trying to bring La Liga games to the United States, who also work closely with the English Football League and UEFA Champions League. For instance, it’s no secret that there have been several reports about the possibility of EFL and Champions League games being played in the United States in the future, so the link up with Relevent is clear.

Relevent is the common thread that binds them all together. Not only that but Relevent will be handling the Bundesliga’s marketing and communications in the United States. That may mean a new broadcaster in the future, but it could open the door for games being played stateside too.

“[The Bundesliga clubs] have some great stories to tell. We have to tell and distribute them properly. This is what the Bundesliga is doing at the moment. We just had the Relevent deal in place for the Americas. We think this will help the Bundesliga to grow. We have to be more than brave to try out new things.”

Plenge discussed innovation in the Bundesliga and how an example of this was the RB Leipzig bodycam that was used during last summer’s friendly versus Aston Villa, as well as in a training session during preparations for a Champions League match last week.

RB Leipzig blazes a trail

RB Leipzig is among one of a small group of innovative, forward-thinking Bundesliga clubs that are pushing the envelope in Germany.

As Plenge explained, “The conversations we do have with Bayern, Borussia Dortmund, Leverkusen and Frankfurt, they’re very driven about the future of how we can innovate the Bundesliga. There are some clubs that are the frontrunners of these conversations, and we want to be part of these.

“But the others who are not the drivers, they are open to discuss and to hear. And then we have to evaluate the impact for the fan and the commercial impact.”

Overall, Germany itself appears to be struggling with half of the country wanting transformative change, while the other half wants to remain traditional. For instance, many of the country’s government offices still use fax machines, which is just one example of many of the excessive bureaucracy in Germany.

At the same time, Germany has been seen as one of the most innovative countries in the world. It’s this clash between tradition and innovation that appears to be happening in the Bundesliga too. For now, though, the ultimate decision about playing games overseas rests with the supporters of Bundesliga clubs. It’s not going to be happening anytime soon, but the fact that the conversation is even happening is a big leap (forward or backward, depending on your viewpoint) for German football.

Photo: Imago

FOX's MLS coverage is doing a disservice to the league this season. So far for 2023, none of the MLS games televised by FOX Sports are being called on-site. Instead, the duo of John Strong and Stu Holden are doing double duty of providing pre-game studio coverage as well as commentating games. To make matters […]

FOX’s MLS coverage is doing a disservice to the league this season.

So far for 2023, none of the MLS games televised by FOX Sports are being called on-site. Instead, the duo of John Strong and Stu Holden are doing double duty of providing pre-game studio coverage as well as commentating games. To make matters worse, FOX isn’t even using their own studio. Instead, they’re flying Strong and Holden to a Vista Worldlink studio in South Florida every week.

Perhaps the best word to describe FOX’s MLS coverage is nonsensical. For instance, instead of FOX Sports broadcasting Saturday afternoon’s LAFC-Portland game from the stadium or its studios in Los Angeles, Holden and Strong called the game from the same studio that USL uses in Florida. That’s also the same studio that had a backdrop resembling a shower curtain in week one.

The timing couldn’t be worse for MLS and FOX. In the two Saturday games that FOX Sports have shown thus far, they televised the opening games of the weekend. Those broadcasts set the stage for the night of coverage on Apple TV, but because the TV broadcasts start so poorly, it tarnishes the league as a whole.

FOX’s MLS coverage sets a low bar

It appears that FOX doesn’t care about the way it broadcasts games. Very little to no effort is put into their work. And at the end of the day, it makes the broadcaster, MLS and league sponsor DoorDash look cheap. It’s also a bad look for talent such as Strong and Holden to be associated with these remote broadcasts. They deserve better.

This is all in stark contrast to the work that MLS and Apple TV are doing with MLS Season Pass. Week one was impressive, with a few bumps. But week two was slicker. Overall, the league has never looked as good as it has on MLS Season Pass.

Since the games on FOX and FS1 are also on MLS Season Pass, we compared the picture quality and audio side-by-side. Apple TV’s picture is so much crisper. Plus it’s easy to hear the difference in audio quality too. You can tell the MLS Season Pass commentators are inside the stadium, for sure.

How can a league look so bad on television, but so good on streaming? By having the two extremes, the league’s coverage feels disjointed. Based on how much MLS has spent on its streaming coverage and how little FOX has spent on television, the two media are not in alignment.

Week 2 of MLS Season Pass coverage

We love that MLS and Apple are taking the feedback from fans and critics to heart, and we saw that in week two with plenty of improvements.

The whip-around MLS 360 show was tighter, less talkative and showed loads of game coverage including more instances of allowing us to listen in to the match commentators, which I particularly loved. The addition of listing the announcers at the bottom of the screen when the broadcast tuned into their match commentary was the attention to detail we appreciate.

Meanwhile, the team of Liam McHugh, Sacha Kljestan, Bradley Wright-Phillips and Kaylyn Kyle are working so well together. To me, MLS 360 is the best way to watch, learn and appreciate MLS. The news that it’s also available on Apple TV+ could give new viewers enough of a taste to add MLS Season Pass to their subscription.

On commentary, the stand-out stars on Saturday night were the duo of Eric Krakauer and Lloyd Sam for their calls of the Columbus-DC United game. Plus the addition of post-match interviews on MLS Season Pass was the cherry on top after hearing Keith Costigan and Brian Dunseth’s exceptional call of the Miami-Philadelphia game. That was followed by Costigan’s solid post-match interview where he got the best out of Inter Miami manager Phil Neville.

Any room for improvement? MLS 360‘s fourth hour of coverage on Saturday night lost a lot of energy on-set at the time when Seattle’s game kicked off. Melissa Ortiz sat in to give some insight about the impact of MLS Season Pass in South America. However, by this point in the night, it’s almost as if MLS needed a whole new crew of analysts (or Taylor Twellman) to inject something new into the show to keep the west coast audience entertained.