At Bavarian Football Works, we cover Bayern Munich about as closely as anyone not actually in Bavaria. So, with the Bundesliga getting ready to start — and our coverage ready to ramp up even more, we thought it was time to address what the hell we are doing here.
When people find our site, sometimes they end up here because of our news coverage, sometimes because they might want to read about a fight, and maybe sometimes because they want to listen to a few dolts rap about Bayern Munich on our podcast. Mostly, I think when people come here, they like it for the mix of news, opinion, entertainment, and the overall fun we like to have here.
Heck, some people might even come for our exclusive grass coverage. Whatever the case, though, we are here and we welcome anyone who wants to join in the conversation.
Knowing that — and with a new season on the horizon — we wanted to put together some responses to questions you might have and a general guide for what everyone can expect ahead of the Bundesliga season starting.
Where are you guys located?
We have a global staff spanning many different ages, genders, races, etc. We mostly communicate through a chat channel, though some of us speak on the phone (who does that in 2022?) or via video applications.
What’s your schedule?
Generally, we think in Eastern Standard Time because the nitwit Site Manager lives in that time zone, so we do the following (except when breaking news or other key stories come up): 12AM EST, 3AM EST, 6AM EST, 8AM EST, 10AM EST, 12PM EST, 2PM EST, 4PM EST, 6PM EST, and 8PM EST. In some cases, we will also publish posts after that. We also will move posts back up into the schedule so a different audience might get to see them.
This can — and will — vary when news starts flying, but generally we like to keep a schedule so we aren’t constantly blowing up everyone’s phones with Bayern Munich news.
Every day, though, you’ll see a Daily Schmankerl posted at 12:00AM EST to start things out (unless we hit platform issues, which ensures I’ll wake up cursing). When a podcast drops, we use 2AM EST and 4AM EST instead of 3AM EST for our posts.
Of late, you will have noticed that we have shortened the blocks of space and that is because has been a TON to cover.
What should we be looking for here?
Bayern Munich and Germany news and opinions 24x7x365.
As stated above, every day starts with a Daily Schmankerl, which a is a mish-mash of anything we think is interesting — and contains some of the more crazy stories and rumors we see. Some other regular features include:
- The Weekend Warm-up: A post that goes live every Friday morning with some takes on the week’s news, a song of the week, some entertainment opinions, and other wacky stuff. This is where we typically will let you in on who we are a bit and what we do.
- Gamethread/Live Blog: This is our discussion forum for every Bayern Munich and Germany match. If you want to chat about a match, post in one of these.
- Observations: After every game, one of our writers will detail things they learned or saw during the match.
- Match Awards: After every game, one of our writers selects the top performers from each position group, along with a Meister of the Match.
We also have a network of AWARD-WINNING podcasts, which includes:
- The Flagship Show: This typically releases on Sunday night EST and is kicked off with a post at 2AM EST (there’s that varying schedule). You could hear anywhere from one-to-three of our folks on this show and it typically is a revolving cast of characters. On this show we cover the biggest news and discussion points.
- The Weekend Warm-up Podcast: I normally take the lead on this and it is typically a solo show, but I do like having guests on. On this show, I usually hit on the “5 things we learned” about Bayern Munich over the course of the week and I’ll also hit on some entertainment-type takes as well.
- The Preview Show: Before matches, we release a preview of the game and give our thoughts and predictions on what might happen.
- The Postgame Show: We want to react as soon as the game is over...just like you! So we put out a podcast detailing what we saw in a match and where things might be going because of it.
In addition, Tom Adams is hard at work on Twitter keeping our social presence strong and helping us stay engaged with the community that way as well.
You guys just care about clicks, right?
This is the shade thrown at every website...but click counts do not factor into our rationale as to what we cover or write. Some subjects here we know will not draw big numbers, but we cover them closely anyway. Ultimately, we are sure that SBN wants us to draw people in, but we have the freedom to not be beholden to any quota or numbers. We have a great, engaged community and that alleviates any thought of us need to click-bait the audience. In fact, we do — sometimes — mock click-bait type leads for the fun of it...but we hope you are savvy to when we have fun with those.
Seriously, though, we like activity on the site, but don’t measure how good or bad we do based on clicks.
Why do you cover transfer rumors so closely?
We cover all the news...transfers, injuries, feel-good stories, history, the women’s team, the youth teams...ALL of it. When there is a hot transfer story, we follow it from A to Z because for many people, we are the outlet that can provide them coverage in English.
For example, we have been beat up in the comments over our coverage of Robert Lewandowski’s transfer (we were told this wouldn’t happen), Matthijs de Ligt (we literally were told “this isn’t FIFA”), and even Marcel Sabitzer’s arrival at Bayern Munich where we put an item in the Schmankerl — and a well-known journalist quote tweeted us to let us know that was rubbish...until it wasn’t.
We vet the rumors the best we can and for the more speculative rumors, we use the Schmankerl.
When things get super-hot (like with Lewandowski and De Ligt), we typically have A LOT of updates because — again — we are the English language site of choice for a lot of Bayern Munich fans. Many do not have the time to sift through Google translate to get the gist of a story, so they come here — and we appreciate that.
How do you decide what to cover?
Anything Bayern Munich-related — and some things that are not — are on the table. We give our writers the freedom to pick what they want to write about. Obviously, there are a lot of options every day. Some items that are not time sensitive will get bumped off the schedule to a later date if more pertinent news breaks, but hey...that’s life.
How do you differentiate your news coverage with your opinion pieces?
For straight news, we try to cover it without opinion. If a writer has an opinion on a news pieces, we typically make a section called “BFW Analysis”, so they can give their thoughts. Sometimes...the opinion does seep in there, but we really try to differentiate the news from what an individual writer thinks.
Is Tom Adams really English?
#EnglishTomAdams is whatever you want him to be — and yes, he is also a Liverpool fan (we aren’t perfect!).
Why are so many of you negative?
There is a mix here. We have some who only see the great things about who and what we cover and others who think the sky is falling. For a site to be successful, we need different view points. We have writers of different sexes, races, religions, etc...we want to encourage discussion and offer the ability to project different view points. But yes, we do have some folks who skew negative, but who else would we have to roast when things go right?
So, what’s the point of this? Why do you people do what you do?
We do this for the following reasons:
1. The millions of dollars we all make from clicks
1. In general, we all love to discuss the general comings and going with the club. Being one of the first outlets to get the news out there presents a good forum for discussion and reaction — like you might get at an old corner bar — or a dive bar. We’re here, some of us are drunk, and we like to chat.
2. It’s fun!
3. Really, that’s probably it.
Who is the biggest jackass on the staff?
Hmmm...that is a great one, but it’s probably me. Ineednoname probably gives me a strong run, though.
So there you have it...we like you being here at BFW. Try to be (somewhat) nice and have good discussions. If you have other questions, drop them below...and we’ll try to answer as soon as we can.
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