Bayern Munich’s 2021 annual general meeting was utterly disastrous. The club and the fans opposed each other on the matter of a sponsorship with Qatar Airways, which got so heated that the club president Herbert Hainer ended the meeting far too early, cutting off multiple proposals and earning the chant “Hainer out!”
Needless to say, it was an utter catastrophe. Three years on, however, Qatar Airways is no longer a sponsor of the club, Hainer is still president of Bayern and he has claimed to have learned the right lessons from the whole debacle:
“We drew the right conclusions from 2021. This year alone, we organized 22 member events – with over 1,000 participants. We ask questions, we listen, we get moving,” Hainer insisted, via @iMiaSanMia. “We introduced a Teens Club, we are integrating the ‘Silver Generation’ over 65 into our support programs at schools to bring generations together. We gained around 40,000 new members in 2024, more than ever before in a year, which we also see as confirmation of our dialogue formats. We are currently experiencing the biggest growth we’ve ever had. We have well over 360,000 club members, which makes us very happy.”
Despite this success, however, the club cannot rest on its’ laurels:
“We are one of the absolute top clubs worldwide, but it is becoming more difficult to keep up with competitors who have outside investors backing them,” Hainer bemoaned, again via @iMiaSanMia. “Our FC Bayern Campus was inaugurated in 2017 — now over 40% of the talents trained there became professionals, and players like Jamal Musiala, Aleks Pavlović and Josip Stanišić made the leap with us. We are continuing down this path. FC Bayern has an identity. You can’t buy that, it has developed over decades. We are not resting on our success. We are firmly rooted in Bavarian soil, but we are always looking to the future.”
Looking for a discussion on Bayern Munich’s second half chances for success, along with how all of the contract negotiations could impact the team, plus an update on Florian Wirtz? Awesome, then join Samrin and Chuck for the Bavarian Podcast Works Show on Patreon, Spotify, or below:
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