Statement of Club Nr. 12 to the Bundesliga home match of FC Bayern against the advertising venture RB Leipzig
RasenBallsport Leipzig hasn’t been “shown ill will” beginning with Uli Hoeneß’s emotional speech at FC Bayern’s annual meeting by the majority of football fans. But does it actually make sense for him to take his anger out at an Austrian drink manufacturer or its football-playing advertisement project in Saxony?
From our perspective, it hits the wrong thing. We all live in a (sometimes more, sometimes less) social market economy, and most of the time we live our daily lives very well within this system. Advertisement and marketing are important components thereof. In that respect, the attempt of RedBull to snag as much attention as possible for its tacky money-maker is fully legitimate and also not in bad faith.
However, consumers and therefore also football fans in our country have exactly the same right to push away the advertisement industry to an extent in certain areas of their life. Just as everyone can refuse mailed advertisements in their own mailbox, so too can friends of football define boundaries for the sport-area of their life, with which the assimilation through advertisement is stemmed.