Borussia Dortmund is the first Bundesliga soccer club to enter into a partnership with an arms manufacturer – just before the most important match of the season.
Sebastian Kehl has talked a lot about weapons in recent days. He has been talking about the sporting Arsenal, the footballing means with which Borussia Dortmund can “hurt” their seemingly overpowering opponents Real Madrid in the Champions League final on Saturday. But on Wednesday, BVB confirmed a sponsorship partnership with the armaments company Rheinmetall – it has to face moral and ethical questions in connection with real weapons just before the most important match in the club’s recent history.
The Düsseldorf-based DAX company, whose share price has increased fivefold since the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, will become a “Champion Partner” of the Bundesliga soccer club for an initial period of three years. According to the press release, Rheinmetall will in future “appear in the sporting and social environment”, but not on the shirts. Nevertheless, the logo will be visible during preparations for the final. It is also certain that several million euros will be spent annually for the “use of high-reach advertising space, marketing rights and event and hospitality offers in the stadium and on the club grounds”.
The shitstorm anticipated by the club began immediately after the announcement. Many fans were disappointed and angry, and the “German Peace Society” called for protests in front of the club’s offices: “I am very shocked. I would never have expected BVB to even consider entering into a partnership with an arms company,” Managing Director Michael Schulze von Glaßer told the SID on Wednesday. “In its code of basic values, BVB is committed to advocating a non-violent society.
Hans-Joachim Watzke sold the first involvement of an arms company in the Bundesliga in a very offensively positive way. Security and defense are “elementary cornerstones” of democracy: “Especially today, as we experience every day how freedom must be defended in Europe. (…) We are looking forward to the partnership and are deliberately opening ourselves up to a debate.”
There will be, but it could distract from the big goal – the Champions League triumph at Wembley. Therefore, in addition to the partnership itself, the timing of the announcement was also a big surprise. Only on Tuesday, sporting director Kehl had demanded that the focus should now be exclusively on the final – this approach has failed. When asked by SID, the leading fan organization Unsere Kurve spoke of a “new low on an apparently open-ended greed scale”.
Members of the BVB fan council, which is said to have been involved or at least informed in advance, did not wish to comment. The Federal Ministry of Defense, whose advice the club is said to have sought, also declined to comment. In contrast, an author of the popular online portal schwatzgelb.de took a clear position: “Guys, just straighten yourselves out, make it clear that Rheinmetall wants image and BVB wants money. (…) But save your statesmanlike bluster.”
Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger had spoken of two partners “whose ambitions, attitude and origins are a good match”. BVB is “a club from the heart of North Rhine-Westphalia and stands like no other for the pursuit of top performance and international success”. Rheinmetall wants to “make its brand even better known internationally as a leading systems supplier to the defense industry and as a driver of industrial innovation in civilian markets”. The company will hardly want to appeal to the common BVB fan.
Rheinmetall is a DAX-listed group with more than 30,000 employees worldwide and annual sales of around 7.2 billion euros. The company is to receive 30 billion euros from the special fund of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr alone. Rheinmetall also supports the handball team Bergischer HC and the basketball team Capital Bascats Düsseldorf