German billionaire says €250mn Bayern Munich deal about more than money
Family stake in Germany’s most successful football club driven by passion as much as financial returns, Maximilian Viessmann says
The German billionaire whose family business has invested €250mn in Bayern Munich said the deal was not driven solely by expectations of financial gain but by the long-term value of football and his passion for the club.
Maximilian Viessmann, head of Viessmann Generations Group, told the FT he was seeking a “return on life” by purchasing a stake in Germany’s most successful football team that makes his family its fourth outside shareholder.
“This is a strategic investment” aimed at “long-term value creation”, said Viessmann, adding that his company, which made €12bn by selling its heating division, had not invested for the dividends.
He said there were no plans to capitalise on the wave of investment in football clubs by flipping the newly acquired 6.7 per cent holding for a quick profit. “We’re convinced the stake will gain in value over time, even if we have no plans to sell it. For us, it is an evergreen investment,” he said.
Viessmann, 37, pointed instead to the “return on life” he derived as a supporter from “seeing Bayern Munich succeed on the pitch . . . and knowing you can make a contribution as a businessman”.
Viessmann Generation Group this week joined German corporate giants Adidas, Audi and Allianz as investors in the Munich club, paying €250mn for the stake, according to people familiar with the transaction.
This valued the six-times European champions’ equity at €3.7bn, almost three times the figure when Allianz bought its stake in 2014. The size of Viessmann’s investment was first reported by Bild Zeitung.
The deal lifts the share of Bayern Munich held by outside investors to 30 per cent, the maximum possible under its constitution, with the rest owned by its 450,000 members. The club last year held talks with EQT, a private equity firm, over selling a minority stake but the negotiations fell apart.
Bayern Munich is ranked by Deloitte as the third-richest football club in the world, above any teams in the English Premier League. That is in large part due to the strength of its commercial income, notably lucrative sponsorship deals with the likes of Allianz, which has naming rights for its 75,000-seater stadium, and Deutsche Telekom.
German football has largely been sealed off from the wave of private investment into European football due to strict ownership rules, which require at least 50 per cent of the voting rights to remain with the club’s members.
Several attempts to bring in private equity investment at the league level have failed, most recently in 2024 when fan protests led the Bundesliga to abandon a planned stake sale. The league is instead exploring a lending arrangement with outside investors.
The German system has helped maintain the link between clubs and supporters, who are among the most passionate and vocal in the world, notably by keeping ticket prices down.
Yet critics say it puts German football at a financial disadvantage compared with international rivals by stopping deep-pocketed foreign investors from buying clubs and spurring investment. Only three of Europe’s top 20 clubs by revenue are German.
Bayern Munich’s financial firepower has enabled it to compete with European rivals and attract big-name players, including England captain Harry Kane and French winger Michael Olise.
However, Germany’s domestic league is now increasingly one-sided. Bayern has won the Bundesliga title 13 times in the past 14 years.
The Viessmanns were catapulted up the German wealth list when they agreed a €12bn sale of their heat pump business to US rival Carrier Global Corp in 2023. Manager Magazin, the German business monthly, ranked the family as the 12th richest in Germany.
Viessmann Generations Group, which still holds a 5 per cent stake in Carrier, owns businesses focused on electricity grid infrastructure, district heating and cooling and refrigeration technology with €2bn in revenue and is an investor in start-ups.
The Bayern stake is its second sports-related investment after a 3.5 per cent holding in professional sailing team Germany SailGP. Viessmann said sport was a “strategic” business area for his company.
He also said it “helped foster social cohesion” and was “one of the few remaining spaces where people come together and find common ground”.
Sport emphasised the “principle of meritocracy, which unfortunately can no longer be taken for granted in today’s world,” he said.