Since the start of the 2018/2019 season, BVB has been the first and only Bundesliga club to make use of cutting-edge technology that allows for the multiplication of advertising displayed at home games, all without the creation of a single square centimeter of additional advertising space in Signal Iduna Park. The club’s virtual display system means that the advertising displayed on TV broadcasts in the United States can be different to that in Europe - or indeed different to that in Asia too. Meanwhile, fans back in Germany are entirely oblivious. The initial feedback from partners has been extremely positive.

 

It happened on 26 August 2018 in Signal Iduna Park, but nobody had the slightest idea about it. That was exactly the plan - and it was executed to perfection. Since then, it’s been a feature of every single BVB home match. 

The opening day of the Bundesliga season. A wonderful late summer's afternoon. Borussia Dortmund versus RB Leipzig. The storied old club run out 4-1 winners to go top of the table. One month previously, the Black & Yellows were on tour in the USA, where they visited Chicago, Charlotte and Pittsburgh, playing matches against Manchester City, Liverpool and Benfica. Everywhere they went they received an enthusiastic welcome from football fans in the United States. And now, on the first matchday of the new season, BVB is expressing its gratitude for the incredible hospitality shown throughout the tour.  A message of thanks to the club’s American supporters is displayed on the advertising boards in the stadium. You might think - ''Really? I didn't see it!'' Well, you probably didn't. You wouldn't even have been able to. Because the message, which received an overwhelmingly positive response, was intended exclusively for the USA. It was only visible on US television.

This is possible thanks to virtual advertising display, a system developed by the technology service provider Supponor. BVB and its marketing partner Lagardère Sports have had the groundbreaking technology certified by the German Football League (DFL). Borussia Dortmund is the first and only club in the Bundesliga to use such a system, which was installed in Signal Iduna Park before the start of the 2018/19 season and which has been used at all home games since. "The response has been extremely positive. We have received absolutely no complaints; all the feedback we’ve received has been good," says Carsten Cramer, head of marketing at BVB.

''We can gain new international partners.''

In the meantime, the financial expectations that BVB and Lagardère attached to the four-fold split-signal system have also been fulfilled. The technology can broadcast different advertising displays to Europe/Africa, North and South America, South Asia (including China, India and Korea), Japan and Southeast Asia (including Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam) simultaneously. One major advantage of the new system is the fact that it allows for a multiplication of the total advertising displayed at home matches, all without the creation of even one square centimetre of additional advertising space in the stadium itself. It has allowed BVB to generate millions of euros worth of additional revenue. Christian Kothe, Sales Manager at Lagardère Sports, explains why: "The trend is clearly towards precisely tailored advertising that is geared to the markets in the respective countries, i.e. to the target groups and their consumer behaviour".. With virtual advertising, marketing experts can take these trends into account. "From the perspective of a specialist chemicals company that is represented in 100 countries around the globe, we can only welcome the opportunity to specifically tailor our brand presence in individual markets," says Markus König, responsible for brand communication at Evonik Industries AG.

The first benefit? "Our long-standing partners such as Evonik and Wilo, who sell their products worldwide, now have the opportunity to address their customers in their local languages," says Carsten Cramer. The second benefit, explains Kothe, is that: "We can win new, international partners who do not market their products in Germany but who have a sports-relevant target group and who wish to make use of the large public interest which broadcasts of BVB matches generate in their target markets.'' 

The virtual nature of the new system also appeals to the more traditionalist element of the club’s fanbase, for whom the terms "internationalisation" and "monetisation" are representative of everything that's wrong with modern football. These fans will not even notice that the in-stadium marketing is being optimised. In Signal Iduna Park, unlike in many other stadiums, fans are not confronted with advertising messages in Chinese, Russian or Arabic, which means that a local sense of connectedness is not lost. That football fans in Mongolia will be pleased to see adverts for local company MIAT in Signal Iduna Park is something that nobody in Germany will be aware of. "Before virtual advertising, we would have needed three different matches to address target groups in our core markets in three different languages - English, Chinese and German. Now we can display our messages individually to different national markets all during the same match," says Jan Radzey, Group Vice President Sales Area South West at WILO SE.

It happened on 10 November 2018 - and, once again, no-one noticed. Borussia Dortmund hosted Bayern Munich for a top-of-the table clash between the two leading lights of German football. The game was broadcast in more than 200 FIFA member states, including China, of course. In China, 11 November is known as "Single's Day", or "Double Eleven". Online retailers look to attract customers by offering huge discounts. Not all too dissimilar to "Black Friday'' or "Cyber Monday". But, given that this is China we're talking about, the scale is even bigger. The shopping platform Alibaba alone had a turnover of almost 31 billion US dollars on "Single's Day" in 2018. On the eve of 11 November, the virtual advertising display in Signal Iduna Park was handed over to the marketing departments of Tchibo, the drugstore chain Rossmann and the Flensburg-based pharmaceutical group Queisser, which was looking to promote its "Doppelherz" product on the Chinese market. None of these three companies had ever advertised in German football before. But the huge public interest for TV coverage of the big game between BVB and Bayern proved to be the perfect means of accessing customers in Asia. Queisser in particular was highly satisfied with its sales of "Doppelherz" on "Single's Day". 

''I'll just call up Borussia to see about renting a few metres of advertising space.''

This is just one of many examples of the new possibilities offered by virtual advertising displays. Another is that of "Brinkhoff's No. 1", a traditional beer from Dortmund and one of BVB's leading partners in Germany. However, Brinkhoff's sales strategy is clearly focused on its local region. Brinkhoff's isn't even available for purchase in the USA. But that's not the case for DAB, which - like Brinkhoff's - belongs to the Radeberger Group. So the company decided to use the virtual advertising display to target customers in Canada and the USA with the traditional duo from Dortmund: DAB and BVB! No problem for Brinkoff's, as any potential conflict of interests had been avoided.

Behind all this lies an unbelievably complex and intricate technical process. Which, unsurprisingly, is also extremely expensive. Development alone took several years and required millions of euros worth of investment. After all, the tool has to be able to function reliably in both pouring rain and heavy snow. It has to be perfectly in tune with both the regulated glow of the floodlights and the glistening of the sunshine on a clear day. Operation of the technology is also costly in the extreme: satellite capacities must be booked in order to send the various signals to different locations across the globe. But the expense ultimately pays off. Medium to high seven-digit revenues have certainly brought delight to both BVB and Lagardère. The marketing specialists have proven key to success. "Without the global sales structures, we wouldn't be able to market the advertising display system at all," says Carsten Cramer, going on to add: ''It's not like the managing director of a Thai brewery is sitting in his office thinking, 'Oh, today I'm going to call up Borussia Dortmund in Germany and ask about renting a few metres of advertising space.' " 

Although digitalisation seems to offer almost endless possibilities for both today and the future, the Managing Director at BVB is of the opinion that there is a limit to everything. He is working on the basis that, in future, even more advertising space in the stadium will be digital and therefore networked and centrally controlled. But he rejects an approach based on "more, more, more and more". "We will never turn our stadium into one giant promotional lights show like Las Vegas. That’s not what Borussia Dortmund is about. We have to be very careful to find the right balance!"