FC Bayern dribbles into the cloud with SAP

With more than 432,000 members, FC Bayern Munich is the second-largest sports club in the world, just behind Sporting Lisbon. FC Bayern Munich AG, the company responsible for professional football, also ranks among the top clubs in terms of revenue. In the Deloitte Football Money League ranking, FC Bayern took third place in the 2024/25 financial year, behind Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, ​​with a revenue of more than €978 million.

To ensure this positive development continues, FC Bayern has extended its long-standing partnership with SAP. The record champions of the Bundesliga have expanded their infrastructure, migrating their multi-tiered SAP S/4HANA environment to a private cloud based on SAP Cloud ERP Private. This includes over 9.5 million fan and member records, as well as more than 25,000 product records. 

“Even before the migration, we worked together to consolidate our system landscape, consolidating 52 fan data-carrying systems into the S/4HANA system,” explains Michael Fichtner, CIO of FC Bayern. “There, the central fan database was established, the Golden Fan Record was built, and the data was consolidated into a redundancy-free 360-degree view.”

Following this consolidation came the “leap to the cloud,” Fichtner says.

Advantages: More innovative, efficient, and safer

The migration was carried out as part of the Rise with SAP approach. In addition to the cloud version of the ERP system, this includes supplementary infrastructure services and a platform for the integration of data and applications as well as AI analytics (Business Technology Platform). In addition, there are tools for analyzing and optimizing existing business processes, as well as services from SAP.

“By migrating to the cloud, we gain access to innovation and further developments. An important aspect was also the simplified integration of other technologies or services that are predominantly or exclusively provided as cloud services,” says Michael Fichtner. 

Another important factor, especially relevant for the IT department: “The migration allows us to refocus on process, application and business innovations, and thus on issues that will further develop our company and make it future-proof.”

SAP provides the new environment in certified data centers, with disaster recovery, centralized security updates, and monitoring. This enables FC Bayern to meet all current security and compliance standards. At the same time, the requirements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the standards of the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) are met.

New digital services — both internal and external

Among the most important goals the club aims to achieve with the new platform is the expansion of digital services for fans and members, but also for its own employees. FC Bayern wants to address fans even more individually than before, not with standardized content and mass emails, according to Fichtner.

“For this, we need appropriate data and the ability to process large amounts of data in compliance with data protection regulations. This is not feasible without the appropriate infrastructure and scalability,” he says. 

According to Fichtner, one aspect that plays a central role is digital sovereignty and “control over our data and the data of our fans.” With SAP’s support, FC Bayern can implement this in the form of a sovereign cloud environment. 

Internal processes are also expected to benefit from the new IT environment, for example through use of AI in areas such as human resources, logistics, and financial accounting.

“We expect to automate an increasing number of activities, allowing our colleagues in the specialist departments to focus on specific tasks,” Fichtner emphasizes. “Ultimately, this will enable us to provide better service to our fans because we gain time to address other issues.”