Colours of the world unite in Bundesliga
NO OTHER football league in the world puts its fans at the forefront like the Bundesliga.
Affordable ticket prices and world-class football continually lead to sold-out stadia and a peerless matchday atmosphere. But for many fans, passion runs much deeper than simply attending their team’s matches.
The Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL) estimates that 40 million people in Germany follow the Bundesliga, or around half the population of the country, and for many, their club is their life.
As part of the Bundesliga’s winter engagement campaign “Show Your Colours”, we looked at the passion the Bundesliga creates not just at home but around the world.
In Germany, love for your club means supporting your team through thick and thin. As part of the “Show Your Colours” campaign, we put the loyalty of three die-hard Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Mönchengladbach fans to the ultimate test.
Would they betray their loyalty to their club for money and gifts from two fake agents? All they had to do in return was switch their allegiance to that of their fiercest rivals Borussia Dortmund, FC Schalke 04 and FC Köln respectively, and support them with the same exuberance as their original clubs.
As many of us would, their eyes lit up at the sight of a briefcase filled with thousands of euros. Would they fold? Of course not.
“I would be selling my whole identity, my own reality”, “It’s a matter of heart. I was born a Gladbach fan”, and “You are born a Bayern fan!” were the impassioned responses our two agents received from the bemused supporters. These fans were not for sale at any price.
Dedication to the Bundesliga is not only limited to its German heartland, though. Fans from all corners of the world are showing their Bundesliga colours. Over 8000km away in Kansas City, Bundesliga aficionados regularly gather in the early hours every Saturday to catch the day’s action in a pub surrounded by fans of all clubs proudly sporting their team’s colours.
Their reasons for supporting their respective clubs are varied, but their love and enthusiasm for the Bundesliga remains of the highest order, as it does 14 time zones away on the east coast of China, where a young couple live and breathe BVB - so much so that their wedding featured the black and yellow of Dortmund.
There is also a relatively unknown passion for RB Leipzig in the Mozambique capital of Maputo. With links to former East Germany, the rise of a club from the GDR’s second city into the Bundesliga sparked a flurry of fans to show their colours for Die Roten Bullen.
Fans now have the chance to live their passion with the Show Your Colours campaign. The winner will receive two tickets for a Bundesliga match of their choice in the second half of this season, giving them the chance to absorb the atmosphere of the team they follow so devotedly in their corner of the world.
Whether they want to experience the sensation of facing the Yellow Wall at Signal Iduna Park, visit the home of the champions at the Allianz Arena, sample the character of the smallest stadium in the Bundesliga at Freiburg’s Schwarzwald-Stadion with picturesque views of the Black Forest, or anything in between, the Bundesliga has it all.