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German arms-maker Rheinmetall had a bad Saturday night.
Top football club Borussia Dortmund — newly sponsored by the giant weapons merchant in a controversial deal unveiled this week — lost the Champions League football final against Real Madrid by two goals to zero.
The sponsorship triggered discussion about the weapons industry moving to the mainstream in a country still shaped by the legacy of World War II, where military matters can still be taboo.
Green Economy Minister and German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck acknowledged that the deal was “unusual” but reflected the reality of a “different, more threatening world” where companies like Rheinmetall have gained prominence as arms suppliers to Ukraine, where Kyiv uses Western munitions to fend off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.
Despite dominating parts of the final on Saturday night and creating clear chances, Dortmund eventually succumbed in the latter stages to the favored Real Madrid, which won its record-extending 15th title. Dani Carvajal scored the opener with a header from a corner in the 74th minute, before Vinícius Júnior doubled the advantage moments later.
The Dortmund-Rheinmetall deal, worth millions of euros over three years, will see the weapons-maker able to post marketing messages across Dortmund’s stadium, though not yet the coveted front-of-jersey spot for a corporate logo.
In a statement announcing the deal on Wednesday, Borussia Dortmund Chairman Hans-Joachim Watzke said the club was “opening ourselves up to a dialogue” by partnering with an arms-maker but defended the agreement by arguing that in the present reality of war in Europe, “security and defense are fundamental cornerstones of our democracy.”
Many Dortmund fans expressed their dismay at the announcement, noting that the club’s code of ethics included a commitment to a society without violence, as reported by German outlet DW.
A post on Dortmund’s fan blog Schwatzgelb.de slammed the club for its lack of transparency and questioned whether “strengthening national security is not the job of politics rather than a football club.”
In comments reported by Welt, Spokesperson for the Left Party in North Rhine-Westphalia Sascha H. Wagner noted that “sport is supposed to unite people and nations” and a company like Rheinmetall which is “partly responsible for … suffering and death caused by weapons production” could not serve as a role model in sports.
In an intersecting note, Ursula von der Leyen — a former German defense minister and the current European Commission president — unusually watched the match in Madrid with Spanish conservative Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
She is networking in Spain in a bid to lock in the 361 European Parliament votes she’ll need to secure a second term atop the EU Commission.
Fair game
For Rheinmetall, the Dortmund deal is just a first step toward taking the taboo out of the business of selling arms.
Buoyed by record demand from Western allies for weapons they can send on to Ukraine — and to restock dwindling national silos — the Düsseldorf-based weapons-maker is aiming to become the world’s single largest producer of artillery ammunition this year as it looks to satisfy soaring demand, especially in Europe.
The millions of euros the sponsorship deal is reported to be worth is a fraction of the €40 billion which company officials estimate Rheinmetall is raking in from the German government’s special €100 billion fund to modernize the Bundeswehr in the wake of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine, and the €140 million in EU subsidies received to help boost ammo production as quickly as possible.
Splashing some of that revenue on sponsorship deals for a team which plays its games at a stadium just a 45-minute drive from Rheinmetall’s corporate headquarters will potentially help transform the maker of armored vehicles and shells into an acceptable household name.
Slapping the jagged blue Rheinmetall logo on stadium walls hosting games at the highest level of the world’s most popular sport is aimed at making Rheinmetall “better known internationally,” the company’s CEO Armin Papperger said, adding that his firm should be known both as a defense industrial heavyweight and “as a driver of industrial innovations in civilian markets.”
The deal is part of a wider push within Europe’s defense industry to gain credibility as executives seek fresh access to commercial finance markets and pitch to soak up more public funding for the expansion of research facilities and factory manufacturing capacity.
But it isn’t the first controversial sponsorship deal in recent German football history. Dortmund’s biggest local rival, Schalke 04, was sponsored for a decade-plus by Russian energy giant Gazprom until Putin invaded Ukraine.
