20 years Transfermarkt - From non-league football to the Champions League

It was the moment when Transfermarkt founder Matthias Seidel noticed that his little football portal was set to be a winner. “Out of pride, I couldn’t get that grin off my face all day long,” says the die-hard Werder Bremen fan. But you have to know: Seidel is not talking about today, but about the early days, “when more than five new users registered on Transfermarkt in one day, or when we counted 500 visitors.”

For the 20th anniversary The new “What’s my value?”“ Legends edition Play it now! In the meantime, after 20 years, his small Transfermarkt is one of the big players in football, with almost 600,000 registered users, millions of visitors every day, about 760,000 player profiles, about 75,000 club pages, more than 1,500 competitions, well over a million match reports in the database and country editions all over the world. The latest coup: Transfermarkt.fr, with which the French-speaking market is now being conquered after great successes in England, Spain, Italy and Turkey, among others. Internationalisation is progressing and Seidel knows who is at the top of his thank-you list.

In the beginning there was only Werder, football enthusiasm & helpful users

The beginning was made in 2000 with a Transfermarkt version in a ring binder design, although not with the idea, which is behind Transfermarkt today. Seidel was interested in getting green and white information as a Werder supporter in Hamburg. “Thomas Schaaf is the new coach, his first transfer period is impending, and who does he want to get? That’s the moving question,” Seidel remembers.

But at first, there was only his own football enthusiasm and the domain transfermarkt.de. The content was entered into the HTML pages and the first users who came across the site by chance offered their immediate help. From then on, TM reached one milestone after the next.

Milestones in the history of TM

2001: The TM database is created and fed with information, maintained and continuously updated.

2002: Seidel starts with the listing of player’s agents on the site, which makes Transfermarkt a reference book for the “professional audience” more and more.

2003: The first user meeting. 17 users met in Dortmund. In the party cellar of a church congregation. There was kicking, quizzing and partying.

2006: After the World Cup, there was the first major technical relaunch.

2007: The “rumour mill”, one of Transfermarkt.de’s hobbyhorses, is linked to the extensive TM database. And the starting signal for internationalisation is given in Austria with Transfermarkt.at.

2008: Transfermarkt.ch follows in Switzerland and Transfermarkt becomes part of Axel-Springer-Verlag. Seidel emphasizes: “The decision to bring a partner on board in Axel Springer SE was my best strategic decision in the company’s history. In 2008, there were not even suitable corporate structures and just three employees.”

2009: Transfermarkt.co.uk comes to the United Kingdom and Transfermarkt.tv launches as its own video portal with interviews and more.

2010: Relaunch V3! Transfermarkt.tv appears in a new look. The team has given the portal a new coat of paint. Transfermarkt.it is launched in Italy shortly after. In the same year, the programmers developed the manager game, which is still popular today, before Transfermarkt.com.tr was finally launched in Turkey.

2012: Transfermarkt.pl is accessible in Poland.

2013: In Transfermarkt.es a foreign website in Spain appears. For iPhone, and later also for Android, there is also a Transfermarkt app for the first time.

2014: Transfermarkt.nl goes online in the Netherlands, Portugal is happy about Transfermarkt.pt, and a responsive design is created for Transfermarkt.de in the major relaunch V4 - a complete technical and visual redesign.

There are many people to whom I am very grateful, but first and foremost comes the user community.

Since then, Transfermarkt has been growing in Germany and around the world. In 2008 there were three employees, in 2010 Seidel already had eight colleagues alongside him, in 2017 there were already 20 and now there are more than 50 employees in the team. And the editorial team has also grown enormously during this time. In 2010 it still consisted of an editor and an intern. There are now eight editors for the German-speaking countries alone, plus area managers for Turkey, UK, Spain, Italy, North America, Brazil, France, Poland, India, Russia, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium. To the TM team

2019: The TM team enjoyed receiving answers from Barcelona and Leverkusen, among others. Lionel Messi and Kai Havertz, who were voted as player of the season in their respective leagues by the TM community, proudly sent a photo of themselves with their award back to Hamburg.

2020: Transfermarkt counts 1.5 million football matches, which are available in the database. About 760,000 player profiles, about 80,000 coaches, more than 41,000 referees, almost 75,000 clubs and more than 12,000 agents. TM is also well-positioned on social media and provides an accumulated 5 million followers from all over the world on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter with news, statistics and graphics on a daily basis.

Transfermarkt: “An impressive story”

An important part of the TM identity is also the “background” so often conjured up in football - many members of the team come from within the team’s own ranks, are former community members who are now under contract with Transfermarkt. Christian Schwarz, one of the first registered users at the time, wrote his master’s thesis on TM and is now on the editorial staff. Thomas Lintz, who registered as a user in 2005 to discuss Austrian football, even made his way up to the management board.

However, Lintz, who today forms the management together with Seidel and Lars Gantenberg, still cannot help but enter current transfers immediately into the player profiles. He says: “This fundamental motivation to always make the transfer market a little bit better has always been a distinguishing feature of both our users and our team and is the essential foundation for the success of the last 20 years.

C-level colleague Gantenberg, who has been on board for two years, looks on the development of Transfermarkt in amazement: “When Matthias founded Transfermarkt 20 years ago out of his own need for information and his love of football, he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams – I’m sure of that - to create a place where over 70 million like-minded people around the world could meet in a transfer summer.”

And yes, Seidel, who also became president of Concordia Hamburg in 2015, is “mightily proud”. To rise from a hobby to the leading football portal for transfers “is an impressive story. Especially what we have created with our database and – in particular – with the market values is so unique.” And he never forgets who is at the top of his thank-you list. “There are many people in the history of Transfermarkt to whom I am very grateful, but first and foremost, there is the user community. With how much meticulousness the data was and is collected and the high-quality discussions on the many boards were and are conducted, as well as the support with the news. And the motivation was always the fun of it. Just as I still enter match reports for the Oberliga Hamburg myself today.”