How a left-leaning German soccer club managed to create a cult brand

The somewhat different success story of Hamburg's soccer club FC St. Pauli

Yes, I admit - I am a soccer fan, an aficionado, crazy about watching twenty-two millionaires chasing after a ball and happy about a win as if it were my personal success.

Maybe you might refuse to believe it, but yes, we Germans can think about more than making war. Americans are - watch out, it´s irony - better about that (and in our history of Nazi atrocities and crimes that was the best that could happen to the world and to us), the Russians, the Chinese maybe too. We’ll see in Ukraine or in Taiwan, in a few years. The “make love, not war” - wave eventually flooded even this once so belligerent country Germany. Yes, I confess, it’s a kind of “hate you, love you”-thing that is characteristic for our stance, our feelings toward our own country. We can´t wave flags in the same innocent, cheerful, enthusiastic way as Americans of all political beliefs will do with the stars-and-stripes banner. As a German, you can´t love your country after all the Third Reich cruelties, after the Holocaust, after the millions of dead that the Nazi hybris brought over so many people. As a German, you can´t be a patriot. You are a patriot? If somebody asks you that question in Germany, he usually means you are a Nazi. That is why, deep in our German psyche, hidden in an unknown niche far beyond, many of us envy the Americans their hilarious, cool patriotism and on the other hand many of us do not understand why so many of the Americans voted for a person like Donald Trump. He really called himself a patriot, we would say, and they really voted for him, did they?

No, as a German you can’t love your country. You can love another country as if it were your own - the United States, for example, or, as a convinced commie, Cuba, or Vietnam… (I guess some of those guys are still running around on our streets). Our you can love your family, your job, your career, God and Jesus and Holy Mary, your most revered rock band, or your favorite sports club.

For many of us, indeed, our battle field is the soccer pitch, our heroes are not soldiers but players of our beloved club. And I am one of these guys.

I am living in Bavaria. But I am a member of FC St. Pauli. How come I came to love FC St. Pauli 1910 e.V. ?

Let´s cut history short - FC St. Pauli 1910 e.V. (the e.V. stands for registered club, that means an association owned by its members, not by an investor - and we will fight that no investor will own this club) started as a “Turnverein St. Pauli” (gymnastics club). It was a very petit bourgeois bunch of sportsmen far away from the image it now embraces. Later on, the soccer section took the lead inside the club but they never managed to achieve a major success, and they never outpaced their bigger rival in town, Hamburger SV. Most of the time, FC St. Pauli moved between the second and the third soccer league, sometimes with a short intermezzo in the first league (and, as a matter of fact, now in our current 2020/21 season we could achieve that goal to be relegated to the first league, the Bundesliga, and yesterday we kicked DFB cup winner Borussia Dortmund with a 2-1 win out of the competition). You feel it, you hear it, my pride in our club? But it’s true, for a very long time, I and many others did not even care.

FC St. Pauli - that was a real plain Jane. In 1981, for example, just a few 1,900 spectators on average attended a St. Pauli home match. But just around that time something very interesting occurred.

To understand that, we have to switch back to big politics. In 1979, the NATO double-track decision aroused fears of an imminent war between the West and the Soviet Union all over Europe, and especially in Germany. Hundreds of thousands took to the street to march and protest for disarmament and peace. A new, mainly left wing movement came to the surface - pacifists, ecologists, feminists, free-thinking undogmatic leftists, former communist splinter group members, defectors of the ruling pro-nuke Social Democratic Party SPD, Christian activists and neutralists ended up in founding a new party - the Greens. The Greens wanted to live consciously, peacefully, in harmony with nature, free of capitalist constraints, anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-homophobic. And they strived for creating a counter-culture, an “alternative” way of living. Lots of rock bands, actors and artists soon joined the Greens (up to now they have been doing so), and their supporters did not intend to hide or only just show up every four years at election time. Berlin and Hamburg have been the focus, the center, the boiling point and accelerator of this green-alternative, left-wing movement. But also Lefties do want to have some fun, some leisure, some pastime? So they were looking for a club that could be theirs. And, of course, plain Jane FC St. Pauli close to the sinful “Reeperbahn” - where all the “services” are available that women and men can offer to satisfy all-too-human needs - was the first choice. So, FC St. Pauli turned from a boring, obedient petit bourgeois club (one of its presidents, Wilhelm Koch (1900 - 1969), had joined the NSDAP in 1937 and played a dubious, if minor role in the Nazi era) to a colorful, wild, anarchic, rebellious green, left wing club.

And “The Brown and Whites” - according to the club’s colors - stood out as the first in Germany to actively ban Nazi hooligans from the stadium. Up to then, soccer officials in the Bundesliga just did not pay attention to all the hools trying to mingle among hard-core supporters and spreading racist propaganda. The fight against racism symbolized the new endeavor of the club. But the story did not stop here. One thing led to another. International solidarity with oppressed people, open borders for refugees, protection for asylum seekers who are menaced by right-wing gangs, support for handicapped people, struggle for girls’ and women’s rights were all interwoven with the fun generated by pure and simple soccer.

This club is different . “Not established since 1910”, one slogan runs.

But it had been a very long and rocky way to get there - in 2002 “The Boys in Brown” defeated world champion FC Bayern Munich 2-1 but were relegated into the second leadue at the end of the season. The club was heavily indebted, but they had always a knack for good marketing. And so they sold “Weltpokalsiegerbesieger” (reads like world-cup-winner-defeater) t-shirts and jerseys, and they sold that stuff like hot cakes. But financially, the club raced downhill. They had to sell merchandising and marketing rights to third party business partners, and it lasted till 2016 and 2019, respectively, to regain control of these rights.

From 2016 to 2021, FC St. Pauli showed up in jerseys made by US supplier Under Armour cashing in some 1,000,000 euros per year, as the “Hamburger Abendblatt” daily guessed. Under Armour hoped to win market share in Germany as the underdog against the giants Nike and adidas, and what seemed better than to side with the soccer underdog of the league, FC St. Pauli. A win-win-combination. At first sight. But the wild love soon faded away. The St. Pauli-officials had made a brilliant marketing agreement, but they had not screened their partner and they had underestimated their fan base’s reaction. Why?

Kevin Plank, founder-CEO of Under Armour, had spoken out in favor of Republican president Donald Trump - a stunning mistake that got him serious trouble in his home base as well as in Hamburg. Although Mr Plank did try everything to minimize the damage, it was too late. St. Pauli members and supporters rallied against this partnership with a “reactionary right-wing supporter” and urged the St. Pauli officials to not prolong the agreement.

St. Pauli - club president Oke Göttlich and marketing COO Bernd von Geldern did their best to reconcile the members with their club. So they decided in accordance with the fan base to develop their own brand. “We can’t be perfect, but we can be better” - that was their guideline. So the priority was to control all steps of the supply chains by creating their own jersey brand “DIIY” (Do It, Improve Yourself). Why turn to adidas, Nike or Puma when you can do it on your own. It was and it is an ambitious goal. The last time I can remember that a soccer club created its own brand was in 2000 when Borussia Dortmund invented “goool.de” as its own sportswear brand (the endeavor lasted until 2008 when they had to put an end to it because of the heavy losses they incurred). So it remains to be seen whether “DIIY” can survive as a dwarf against giants like Nike and adidas, or should I say like David vs. Goliath? It is risky business.

But, from an ecological viewpoint, it is worth while trying to control every level of the supply chain starting from the organic cotton used by GOTS-certified partners in eastern Turkey. I hope the project will succeed ecologically and economically, helping me to feel comfortable in my green and left convictions and hopes. In the end, all poltics is kind of naive romance, isn´t it….

Turkey, that’s the Achilles’ heel, the weak spot in the narrative, in this wonderful left dreamland. Why do you go to Turkey where this despotic Erdogan crushes down on detracrors and critics and opposition, many of us use to say. Because we have a certified ecological partnership that we can rely on and that pays off as to sustainability as well as to financial profitability, club officials use to respond. And we are convinced, they are quick to add, that this grassroots development can further and nourish change in Turkey. May it be so!

As to Turkey, young Cenk Sahin, a Turkish national, praised in an Instagram post Turkish troops marching into Syria. That mixture of war enthusiasm and national pride finally cost him his contract as St. Pauli supporters and members were not willing to accept this attitude. “It is against our values”, the club leaders announced and ended the contract on October 14, 2019.

Like anything you love, you will find goods and bads. There is not just words, this club really did a lot in social work for a better society. I did mention quite a few but the list is still longer. On the other hand, yes, there is this woke attitude that sometimes is like an explosive danger zone. Sure, not everybody in the club is a left-winger, there are lots of ordinary, “normal”, unpolitical people, and not everyone of them will agree with the poltical orientation of the club. That is diversity, too. Like it or not.

If you are in Hamburg, you will certainly take a trip to the harbor and the Reeperbahn - it’s only a few minutes, and you will see the Millerntor stadium of FC St. Pauli. Go there - even if you are not able to watch a game (the stadium is sold out in normal non-Corona times), you will find people who can bring the magic of St. Pauli to you.

Make your own experience!