Executive Summary

FC Bayern München is one of the world’s biggest football clubs. Its success on the pitch has  translated into success in commerce. Today, the club ranks third in the world for jersey and merchandise sales.

As eCommerce is a significant part of its strategy, the club teamed up with SCAYLE to provide a unique shopping experience to its fans worldwide.

In just 12 months from launch, they achieved remarkable success, including a 38% increase in online sales and a 20% boost in conversion rates.

“We aim to offer the best possible shopping experience to our fans around the world on all our channels. For this, SCAYLE is the best partner since they successfully prove their expertise, particularly from ABOUT YOU, every single day.”

Peter Romics, Director of Global Commerce at FC Bayern München

About FC Bayern München

Founded in 1900, FC Bayern München is a powerhouse in European and world soccer. It has the highest membership of any football club in the world, with over 360,000 members in 2024. The club boasts a phenomenal record of 33 Bundesliga championships, 6 UEFA Champions League titles, 20 DFB German Cup victories, 11 DFL-Supercup wins, and 2 UEFA Super Cup wins – in addition to being crowned world champions twice. 

With this massive global fanbase, the club’s eCommerce strategy is crucial to its connection with supporters worldwide.

Before engaging with SCAYLE, FC Bayern München faced three key eCommerce challenges to achieve its global ambitions: customization, internationalization, and scalability.

Challenge 1. Delivering Effortless Customization

Personalized merchandise is crucial for football clubs. Fans want to customize their jerseys with names and numbers to feel that they are truly a part of the club. Offering customization both enhances the shopping experience for the customer and boosts average order value (AOV) for the club as fans are willing to spend a little more for bespoke merchandise.

As the third largest club for jersey and merchandise sales globally, they needed to offer seamless and user-friendly online customization to its fans. Additionally, they needed its digital setup to take pressure off in-store sales on match days.

“We have approximately 25 home games per year with around 75,000 people coming to the stadium and our store. We hit capacity limits – and queues can be daunting. Unfortunately, this means some people won’t get a jersey.”

Stefan Benzinger, Head of eCommerce at FC Bayern München

Solution: Customization Meets Customer Convenience

SCAYLE and FC Bayern München co-developed an outstanding Jersey Configurator for its digital storefront. Using the Jersey Configurator, fans can add any name and number to the jersey of their choice and see how it will look in real time right on their device’s screen. 

Soon the club will implement SCAYLE’s Click and Collect capabilities, so fans can order personalized shirts online and pick them up in the stadium on a match day. So fans can skip the queue – and the club never miss a sale.

“Through SCAYLE, fans can buy jerseys online. We’ll prepare it, they’ll pick it up at the collection point in the stadium. We’ll relieve the load on the store and, in addition, motivate people to buy online and wear their jerseys during the match.”

Stefan Benzinger, Head of eCommerce at FC Bayern München

To cater to fans’ player preferences, SCAYLE introduced Shop by Player. Our own out-of-the-box solution, this feature enabled the club to create dedicated pages for each star player on their roster. Stocked with player-specific merchandise, fans can browse items they are likely to be interested in – helping them connect with their favorite players and increasing impulse purchases.

For club members, SCAYLE enabled loyalty benefits, such as 10% off,  in the online store. Fans simply enter their “myFCB” account which is connected to SCAYLE’s Member Roles feature. The store then automatically applies the special pricing in the storefront and checkout.

Results: AOV Increase of 15% & Online Sales Increase of 38%

Twelve months after onboarding with SCAYLE, AOV increased by 15.4%.  This growth is directly linked to increased orders of customized jerseys. The seamless user interface and real-time jersey visualization encouraged more customers to personalize their jersey orders. 

As Stefan Benzinger said: “We want to give our fans a preview of their products in real time. My favorite is jersey personalization, that definitely promotes sales and in my opinion, it’s the best there is.”

Member Roles helped increase customer conversion rate by around 20% as it reduced friction at checkout – ensuring the club never lost a sale at the most crucial point of purchase. And the engaging Shop by Player section helped boost sales further.

All of these fan-favorite innovations meant that 12 months after onboarding with SCAYLE, their online sales increased by a massive 38%.

The club is looking forward to even more positive results when they implement SCAYLE’s Click and Collect feature. From boosting engagement to increasing sales, and reducing match day queuing, it will take their strategy even further.

Challenge 2. Giving Global Fans a Local Feel

Every eCommerce store needs to optimize for local retail expectations – no matter how loyal their fans are. Whether it’s language, currency, carriers, or payment providers, customers won’t buy from stores that feel unfamiliar. 

As one of the biggest clubs in the world, FC Bayern München wanted to add more localized shops to its digital store, but with minimal overhead in the backend. For the team, managing multiple local shops efficiently was key.

“Internationalization is key to expanding our global fan base. By providing customers with a localized experience in languages and currencies familiar to them, we’re not only selling more, we’re building deep connections with our fans all over the world”

Stefan Benzinger, Head of eCommerce at FC Bayern München

Solution: A Local Experience for Fans Across the Globe

Directly after onboarding with SCAYLE, FC Bayern München started expanding its global footprint. With SCAYLE’s hyper-intuitive internationalization, the club could set up stores in new regions in record time. After SCAYLE organized all of their data into a centralized data hub, the club was able to replicate current stores and adjust them for local requirements.

Using SCAYLE’s lightning-fast API, the club integrated local carriers and payment methods quickly and easily – ensuring fans could use the providers they knew and trusted. 

Their commerce team could translate stores to the local language with the click of a button. But SCAYLE took the club’s international stores far beyond translations – localizing everything from address validation to tax and duties in an instant.

Results: 8 New Country Stores & 13% Increase in Global Traffic

Just 12 months after onboarding with SCAYLE, FC Bayern München had already opened eight new and fully localized country stores across the world. Each store was tailored to the local language, currency, and shipping preferences of fans.

The club’s expansion through SCAYLE resulted in global online traffic spiking by 13% – helping drive their international profitability.

The club is continuing its international roll out – planning to expand its online presence to more countries in the upcoming years.

“Choosing SCAYLE has enabled us to seamlessly reach fans around the globe and offer a personalized shopping experience in multiple languages in europe and, together with Global-e, all over the world. This enhances our global fan engagement and drives international sales.”

Peter Romics, Director of Global Commerce at FC Bayern München

Challenge 3. Ensuring Reliability When It Matters Most

A football club’s eCommerce business is often defined by massive sales peaks, whether from new player signings, winning a trophy, or a new jersey launch. These events can make or break a brand’s eCommerce strategy, as tens of thousands of fans hit the store at once to buy new merchandise. 

Before onboarding to SCAYLE, FC Bayern München struggled to handle high traffic during these peak events.

“In 2020, we won the Champions League and straight after the game our site went down for 30 minutes. We needed to take advantage of this momentum, but the store collapsed. From that point on it was clear that we have to find a new system. We analyzed the market and decided on SCAYLE.“

Stefan Benzinger, Head of eCommerce at FC Bayern München

Additionally, the club’s catalog was complex, with more than 32,000 variant items – 25% of which were customizable. To manage this complex assortment efficiently and scale their business, the club needed a strong shop system to ensure all inventory was sorted efficiently and customers could easily search for the products they wanted.

Solution: A Store Ready for Anything

Managing massive amounts of API calls without performance loss or failure is what SCAYLE was built to do. To keep the FC Bayern München store stable during peak sales, SCAYLE delivered an AWS-backed infrastructure that ensured top-notch scalability and reliability.

On top of unmatched architectural stability, SCAYLE provides 24/7 monitoring and support as a core part of our support package – ensuring the store always runs smoothly day or night. 

Great performance needs spotless data. SCAYLE centralized and optimized the store’s 32,000 variant items – seamlessly managing product customization. This will enable the club to integrate Ship from Store in the future. If fans can’t get an item online because it’s sold out, the Ship from Store feature taps into in-store inventory, ensuring they never miss an online sale.

Results: 99.9% Uptime and Bullet-Proof Reliability

Since going live with SCAYLE, FC Bayern München’s online stores have run with an uptime 99.9%. 

And even during the highest traffic peaks, SCAYLE delivered. Eleven months after onboarding completed, SCAYLE faced its first big test: the signing of football superstar Harry Kane. To ensure the success of this crucial event, SCAYLE provided additional support outside of standard working hours.

In just one day, they sold more than 10,000 Harry Kane jerseys through the online store. SCAYLE handled the massive spike in demand effortlessly.

Unlike the web crash that followed the club’s victory in the 2020 UEFA Champions League final, they  were able to take advantage of the momentum and didn’t miss a single sale.

“We need a strong partner that we trust, and a system that can handle the traffic spike that comes when a new player joins the team… We are very relaxed in these situations because we know we can rely on the SCAYLE team.”

Stefan Benzinger, Head of eCommerce at FC Bayern München

Overall Results

FC Bayern München’s digital transformation with SCAYLE has delivered impressive growth, enhancing fan engagement, boosting sales, and expanding global reach. Since launching with SCAYLE, the club have experienced:

• +38% online sales
• +15% average order value (AOV)
• +20% conversion rate
• +13% global traffic
• 8 months time to live
• 99.9% uptime
• 10,000+ shirts sold in one day

“SCAYLE’s modern architecture, extensive feature set and deep expertise in retail provided a significant uplift in the last 12 months, both from a revenue and profitability perspective.”

Peter Romics, Director of Global Commerce at FC Bayern München

Future Plans

Looking ahead, FC Bayern München is not slowing down. The club is gearing up to implement a full omnichannel experience by 2025. The club will roll out its own eCommerce app and then connect everything via our omnichannel solution.

This will mean greater engagement across multiple channels, increased sales opportunities, and a stronger connection with fans who can now interact with the club in more ways than ever before.

A key part of these future plans is the club’s commitment to further internationalization – especially for the US market. They’re aiming to implement a number of localization features, including offering language support, to better serve its diverse fanbase.

With these initiatives, the club’s commerce strategy is set to continue its upward trajectory, enhancing fan experiences and driving further growth across the globe.

Do you want a taste of FC Bayern München’s eCommerce success? Contact us today.