Uli Hoeness on Modern Football's Commercialization
Uli Hoeness has spent a lifetime at the heart of Bayern Munich’s power structure, but when he looks at modern football, he sees a sport that has lost its sense of proportion.
In a wide-ranging conversation with FAZ, Bayern’s honorary president stepped away from transfer talk and tactics and went straight for the bigger picture: football, he argued, is being treated as if it belongs on the same level as war and diplomacy.
“Sometimes I think football is taken too seriously,” Hoeness said, before painting a scene from the nightly news. “The news says: Iran did this, the Israelis did that, and by the way, Lennart Karl injured his muscle. All that's missing is for that to be in first place.”
For a man who lived through football’s rise from local pastime to global industry, the contrast stings. He remembers a game that still allowed room for chaos, for anonymity, for nights that didn’t end with a photo gallery and a social media storm.
Oktoberfest, before the camera phones
Hoeness reached for an example that in Munich needs no introduction: Oktoberfest. Today, Bayern’s annual visit is a staged event, a sponsor’s dream, every beer stein and lederhosen shot captured from a dozen angles. For Hoeness, that’s exactly the problem.
“You have to explain everything these days. You can hardly afford spontaneity anymore,” he said.
Then he rewound the tape.
“Take our Oktoberfest visit, for example. It's a publicity stunt now. Back then, if we didn't have a game on Wednesday, we'd ask [Bayern coach] Udo Lattek if we could train on Tuesday morning so we could go to Oktoberfest on Tuesday afternoon. Then the whole team would march in.”
No VIP cordons. No press call. No phones.
“There were no mobile phone photos back then. We didn't just stay for three hours, no, we didn't go home until midnight, but before that, we'd been in almost every tent, ridden on every magic carpet. And sometimes one of us would throw up on the magic carpet.”
Today, that kind of story would be a scandal, a talking point, a viral clip. Hoeness knows it.
“Today, that would be a news story,” he said, looping back to his central complaint: a sport that once lived in the background of everyday life now dominates it.
“I completely reject what FIFA is doing”
Hoeness’s criticism doesn’t stop at media culture. It cuts straight into the game’s commercial core, and in particular, the direction being taken by FIFA ahead of the 2026 World Cup in the USA.
“I completely reject what FIFA is currently doing with the prices for the World Cup in the USA,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the football business as I envision it.”
For him, the World Cup is supposed to be the pinnacle of the sport, not a corporate carnival. The fear is clear: football’s biggest stage is drifting toward an American model that places the show, the sponsors and the spectacle above the match itself.
“The World Cup final must not become like the Super Bowl,” he warned.
Hoeness recently met someone who had been inside that Super Bowl bubble. The numbers he recounted still sounded surreal.
“He was invited to a billionaire's box. The box cost $1.5 million for that one day. For 20 people. That's $75,000 per person. Some of them didn't even watch the game. And the main attraction, of course, was the half-time show.”
For Hoeness, that is the line in the sand: a sport where the game itself slips into the background is no longer the sport he recognises.
Bayern, boxes and a €175 promise
Hoeness is no romantic outsider railing against modernity from a distance. Bayern Munich are a global brand, the Allianz Arena has its share of VIP boxes, and the club sits at the very top of European football’s financial tree.
He doesn’t deny any of that. What he insists on, though, is balance.
Pressed on the existence of those corporate suites at Bayern’s stadium, he didn’t flinch. “Yes, but there are also season tickets for €175. I'm very proud of that.”
That price point is more than a number to him; it’s a statement of intent. A pledge that the club will not turn its back on the supporters who filled the terraces long before global sponsors and TV deals arrived.
“I don't want fans who don't have such high incomes to be unable to afford them. Football belongs to them too, or especially to them,” he said.
Then came the sharpest line of all.
“It can't be that they can only afford to go to a football match if they cut back on food or holidays. A football match must always be possible.”
In an era of escalating ticket prices, hospitality packages and billion-dollar broadcast contracts, Hoeness is drawing a clear distinction: corporate money can exist, but not at the expense of the ordinary fan.
His warning hangs over the sport’s future. As FIFA chases record revenues and World Cups drift toward Super Bowl economics, the question is no longer whether football has changed. It’s whether those who built it can still afford to walk through the turnstiles.
