The publicly traded shares of Champions League finalist Borussia Dortmund on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange are unlikely to gain a lasting boost from a potential victory in Saturday’s final. Jan Kremer, Sports Business Group Expert at Deloitte in Germany, told SBD Global, "On-field success, even if Dortmund would win this year’s Champions League title and as a result it would further increase its revenue for the current fiscal year, is supposed to have a less sustainable impact on the stock price. Since sport is a very fast-moving business and the club would have first to repeat its previous performance in the upcoming years." Kremer added that "it is simply more difficult to make long-term predictions" for a sports team than it is for a company in a different industry. Borussia Dortmund, the only publicly traded Bundesliga club, will play league rival Bayern Munich in the 2013 Champions League Final at London’s Wembley stadium. Only three years after Dortmund won its only Champions League title in '97, the club went public on Oct. 31, 2000 with an IPO price of €11. The stock price has since then been on a downward trend to its current price of €3.17 ($4.10) at the end of trading on Wednesday. Despite the club’s recent on-field success with back-to-back Bundesliga titles in '11 and '12 and a DFB-Pokal (German Cup) victory in '12 as well as off-field success with new revenue and profit records, BVB shareholders have been unable to profit from the club’s success. Kremer said that it has a lot to do with the fact that Borussia Dortmund is a sports team. Kremer said, "It is a totally different surrounding in which a football club operates than companies in most other industries. In addition, the goals of a football club’s management are not comparable with those of other businesses. When talking about professional sports teams, we generally think of utility maximization whereas the goal of other companies is profit maximization, and simply that is a huge difference." For potential investors, the financial numbers are more important than titles and victories. Kremer said, "Over the course of the last year, every time Borussia Dortmund has released its financial numbers it has had a positive impact on the stock price. Of course the on-field success is included in the investors’ expectations but first of all it’s the financial numbers on which future development predictions for a public company like Borussia Dortmund should be based on." Asked to predict the club’s stock price development, Kremer said that he wants to refrain from a prediction. However, he added, "I believe the conditions for a positive development of Borussia Dortmund have been set. The club has returned to an economically stable foundation, and on the pitch, the team almost couldn’t perform any better. I’m convinced the club has left the worst part behind, and will from here on only continue to improve."
