German football clubs — a brand performance comparison.
How can the balance of power between brands in a market be visualised through their presence in search results? The comparison covers FC Bayern München, Schalke 04, BVB Dortmund and the Red Bulls from Leipzig.
A first read on performance.
The Sistrix visibility curve paints a clear picture — but it fuses too many aspects into an oversimplification.
FC Bayern
Dominates the other clubs in visibility by a clear margin.
Schalke 04
Reaches around two-thirds of the Bayern presence.
BVB
Achieves about half. In sheer numbers within the top 100, however, BVB outpaces Schalke.
Red Bulls
Deliver the weakest performance in this comparison.
From visibility score to context.
One line per ranking — almost 230,000 in total. Only filtering by word components makes the structures visible.
Context „trainer“ (coach)
Dominated within the top 10 by FC Bayern. The Red Bulls only appear sporadically.
New entries
For new entries, Schalke 04 scores — FC Bayern shows the weaker picture here.
Google learning in real time
For „trainer bvb“, the Red Bulls also rank briefly. A week later, Google has understood that the contexts do not match closely enough.
FC Bayern has achieved an almost optimal integration mix of its partners — none cannibalizes another, all are perfectly embedded in functional terms.
Who benefits, and how?
The distribution of top rankings around Allianz, Adidas, Telekom and Audi shows the partners getting very different levels of attention.
Allianz Arena
Benefits from logistical search behavior around match days — parking, travel, events generate high rankings.
Adidas & jerseys
More than 700 top-10 rankings for „trikot“ or „shirt“. Other clubs are noticeably less successful.
Audi Cup & Telekom Cup
Audi with 53 top-10 rankings, exclusively via the FC Bayern Audi Cup. Telekom with close to 2,000 top-100 rankings.
Red Bulls & Nike
The jersey shop is not on the club's own domain but at Redbullshop — which pulls Nike away from the RB Leipzig brand.
VW & Mediamarkt
Volkswagen is only loosely associated with the Red Bulls. Mediamarkt appears across several clubs — its effect as an RB advertising partner is diluted.
Unique search phrases, W-questions, unclaimed topics.
Which content carries the visibility — and where are the gaps?
Players as magnets
Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller and Jerome Boateng account for a large share of FC Bayern's top rankings — accordingly important for jersey sales.
W-questions
Within the top 10, BVB answers the most W-questions. The content, however, always centres on team, match results or venue — fundamentals about the sport remain unclaimed.
Unclaimed fields
Rules of the game, the offside rule, video assistant: regularly searched for, answered by none of the clubs. A worthwhile field, especially for youth outreach.
Identical search phrases
BVB, Red Bulls and Schalke spread their rankings across all 100 positions. Bayern concentrates on the first results page.
Entries and exits, upward and downward diffusion.
Domains with more top-100 rankings show greater throughput — and the ratio reveals the clubs' different DNA.
BVB
Loses the most top-10 rankings on a net-relative basis — and stands out for a comparatively high number of decliners.
Schalke 04
A high number of top-100 exits, but a relatively high share of top-10 entries.
FC Bayern
Movements are relatively balanced, with upward flows the most intense — many climbers reach the top 10.
Red Bulls
Movement ratios similar to Bayern, but with only 3% stable rankings — the weakest consistency.