Who is Bernd Reichart, the German CEO trying to relaunch the European Super League?
Who is the German businessman that wants to reinvent football?
Sitting there in a blue jumper and black blazer, Bernd Reichart looks like any businessman one might see walking down any street across Europe. He speaks in impeccable Spanish, becoming all the more understandable when you realise he has been living there in 2003, working for television company Sportfive, among many others. But he’s not behind TV shows anymore: he wants to relaunch the failed project of the European Super League.
“European club football is facing existential problems”, he says, eyes locked on the camera. He is talking to you, telling you how he is going to fix it. (Fix what?) He can do it by taking all control and pulling up the drawbridge so nobody else can get in.
Oh? That’s not it, he explains, “sporting merit is at the centre of any competition we design. There will also not be permanent members.” Reichart definitely knows his keywords to say when it comes to the project first headed by Florentino Pérez in 2021. The German comes from a background of marketing, of selling ideas and concepts to people. Good for him then that he has just been announced as the new CEO of A22 Sports Management, the new promoters of the European Super League.
The German director comes in after working various roles within sports media in Spain. After finishing university, Reichart worked for UFA Sports in Hamburg. He then moved to Madrid with Sportfive where, for a year, he was Marketing Manager. When a role working for Antena3, Spain’s branch of RTL shareholdings came along, Reichart jumped ship to become head of Investor Relations, where he stayed there for three years.
He became managing director of Antena3/Atresmedia in 2007 where he stayed until 2013, directing five television channels, before moving to VOX (the German TV channel, not the Spanish political party) as Managing Director in 2017. Here Reichart according to, ahem, an official FC Barcelona statement on his appointment, “launched some of the most successful programmes in the channel’s history”.
Two years after this move, having climbed the tree via various companies under the same name, Bernd finally reached the canopy and became the CEO of RTL Deutschland. Now he works for A22, a company that, according to FC Barcelona’s webpage, “was formed to sponsor and assist in the creation of the European Super League”.
On 15 December 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union will decide whether or not UEFA is a monopolistic entity, as proposed by the creators of the European Super League. Next week, UEFA will actually meet with the 48 year-old in Nyon, Switzerland, where they will “talk about [their] disagreements but with the goodwill to confront new ideas to move forward”. Let’s see.