Michael Diederich was on vacation with his wife when the phone rang. The then CEO of Hypovereinsbank received an offer over the phone that required little hesitation: by joining FC Bayern Munich, the now 59-year-old secured a dream position. Since July 2023, as CFO of the company that holds the football club, he has been responsible for transfers such as that of star striker Harry Kane – and must prepare the German champions for their global ambitions.

The United States has become a fiercely contested market, with analytics service Ken Research estimating annual media volume at 1.2 billion dollars .

Diederich still sees enormous potential. Having known the US well since his MBA studies at Northwestern University in Chicago in the 1990s, he familiarised himself again with the conditions ahead of the FIFA Club World Cup. During his trip to New York in April, he discovered firsthand the potential in marketing German football to over 340 million Americans – but also the competitive pressure that exists.

The Bundesliga and FC Bayern, as its most successful and internationally recognised representative, compete not only with the major US sports leagues – basketball (NBA), American football (NFL), baseball (MLB), and ice hockey (NHL) — but also with the Women’s National Basketball Association and the National Women’s Soccer League, for viewers’ attention. They also face stiff competition from international football leagues.

The English Premier League, represented at the Club World Cup by star teams Manchester City and Chelsea, enjoys a significant advantage over the Bundesliga, analysts say – an advantage Diederich acknowledges – due to its greater linguistic and cultural proximity to the American audience, and its longer-standing presence in the US market. Spain’s Primera División boasts Real Madrid, the club with the greatest global appeal, which consultancy Deloitte and the business magazine Forbes rank as the world’s most valuable football media brand. And with the large Hispanic population in the US, it has a natural market access.

According to sports analysts at Samford University in Alabama, Italy’s Serie A is still somewhat less visible on American TV screens than the Bundesliga. But between 2022 and 2024, it nearly doubled its viewer growth rate. That is partly due to Christian Pulisic, the face of US men’s soccer, who plays for AC Milan – encouraging media conglomerate Paramount to intensify coverage of Italy’s top league. Many Serie A games are even available for free on CBS Sports in the US.

Other major European leagues appeal to the US audience, accustomed to variety from the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL, through stronger internal competition. Bayern Munich, having won the German championship twelve times in the past thirteen seasons, suffers from a lack of national competition – a problem the Munich leadership team around longtime executives Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Uli Hoeneß helped create through their aggressive approach to German competitors. The current top management, including CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen, Sporting Director Max Eberl, and CFO Diederich, now have to navigate these consequences.

However, FC Bayern, which has had a US office for eleven years, and opened a new representation in New York’s Rockefeller Center in 2023, has increased its visibility in the US through partnerships with Los Angeles FC and the American football franchise Kansas City Chiefs. Regarding investments in this growth market, Diederich has some leeway: Bayern Munich prides itself on having a debt free balance sheet, and ended 2024 with 570.5 million in equity, a figure envied by other companies.

In the 2023/24 financial year, the corporation, FC Bayern Basketball GmbH, and the football club combined broke the one billion euro revenue mark, with profits rising 21% to 43.1 million euros.

Diederich faces managing a rebuild. Sponsorship revenues have recently declined, while after the extremely successful 2020 season with six titles, the club awarded several players multi-million salary increases. These players subsequently failed to meet expectations, drastically lowering their resale value. With winger Leroy Sané, FC Bayern is allowing a top earner to leave on a free transfer to Galatasaray Istanbul after the Club World Cup.

But the business graduate Diederich, who began his career in 1993 as an auditor in Frankfurt, remains calm. In his banking career, which started in 1996 at Bayerische Vereinsbank, he has weathered more turbulent times. He remained loyal to today’s Hypovereinsbank for nearly 27 years with two interruptions, became head of investment banking in 2015, and in 2018 was appointed CEO and member of the executive committee of the parent company Unicredit.

Insiders report that the Koblenz native resisted CEO Andrea Orcel’s 2021 decision to focus the Italian bank’s efficiency and cost-cutting efforts more heavily on the German business unit. Following alleged internal conflicts, Diederich reportedly found it easier to decide to take on his dream job at FC Bayern. Now, he must prepare the German record champions for growth in the US beyond the Club World Cup.