That’s the detail most casual coverage skips: the Bundesliga doesn’t manufacture its own trophies. It commissions them, and licenses everything else, from match balls to toy figurines, through a formal commercial structure most fans never think about while watching a title celebration.

Key Takeaways

  • The Meisterschale was designed in 1949 by Elisabeth Treskow and has been physically expanded three times since, most recently in April 2026, to make room for more champions’ names.
  • Bremen silversmiths Koch & Bergfeld have made and serviced the Meisterschale’s expansions, and also manufacture the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup trophy, introduced in 2010 and renamed in 2025.
  • Bundesliga Media, formed in May 2026 from Bundesliga International and DFL Digital Sports, now runs the Bundesliga’s commercial licensing programme centrally.
  • Playmobil became an official Bundesliga licensee for the 2026-27 season, producing 198 individually licensed player figures, its largest licensing partnership to date.
  • Commercial licensing (match balls, figurines, collectibles) is entirely separate from the Bundesliga’s club-admission licensing system, which governs whether clubs meet the financial and sporting criteria to compete; the two use the same word for unrelated things.

In This Article

What Is the Meisterschale?

The Meisterschale is the trophy awarded to the Bundesliga champion each season, a silver disc engraved with the names of every title-winning club since the league’s founding. Bremen art professor Elisabeth Treskow designed the current trophy in 1949, replacing an earlier statue lost during the Second World War, and it has been physically enlarged three times since, most recently in April 2026, each time to make room for more engraved champions.

Who Actually Makes the Meisterschale?

The Bundesliga doesn’t manufacture the trophy itself. Bremen silversmiths Koch & Bergfeld handled the April 2026 expansion, disassembling, reworking, and reassembling the trophy over roughly two months to fit a new outer ring with room for the next several decades of champions; the trophy now measures 56cm across and weighs over 11 kilograms. The same workshop also made the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup trophy, introduced when the competition was revived in 2010 and renamed in the 2025-26 season in honor of Franz Beckenbauer, who died in January 2024. That trophy is a two-sided design, silver on one face for the Bundesliga, gold on the other for the DFB-Pokal, at 53cm and 5.5kg.

Neither of those facts is widely reported, which is part of why the distinction between “who owns the licence” and “who physically produces the object” gets lost in casual coverage. The Bundesliga controls the intellectual property and commissions the trophies; specialist manufacturers actually make them.

How Does Bundesliga Commercial Licensing Actually Work?

As of May 2026, the Bundesliga’s commercial and licensing operations run through Bundesliga Media, a new entity formed by merging Bundesliga International (the league’s international rights and licensing arm) with DFL Digital Sports and parts of DFL GmbH. That merger centralized media rights, sponsorship, licensing, and digital products under one roof, rather than splitting them across separate units.

The licensee roster under that structure covers a genuinely wide range of product categories. Adidas returned as the Bundesliga’s official match ball supplier for the 2026-27 season with a new ball named TORFABRIK, ending a run under a different supplier. Playmobil signed on as an official Bundesliga licensee for the same season, producing 198 individually licensed player figures, eleven per club across all 18 Bundesliga clubs, described as the largest licensing partnership in Playmobil’s own history. Am Ball holds official licensee status covering collectibles: pin badges, keychains, and licensed miniature replicas of the Meisterschale and the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup, sold as scaled-down versions of the trophies Koch & Bergfeld produces for the Bundesliga itself.

Is Bundesliga “Licensing” the Same Thing as Club Licensing to Compete?

No, and this is worth being explicit about because the same word covers two unrelated processes. The commercial licensing described above, match balls, toys, collectibles, sponsorship rights, is entirely separate from the Bundesliga’s club-admission licensing system, the financial, sporting, and legal criteria a club must satisfy each season to be permitted to compete in the Bundesliga at all. One is a commercial merchandising and IP programme; the other is a compliance and eligibility system. They share a name in English-language coverage purely by coincidence of terminology, not because they’re related processes.

Why Does This Structure Matter for Merchandise Buyers?

The Meisterschale’s story is a useful illustration of how licensed sports merchandise actually works at scale: the rights holder (the Bundesliga, through Bundesliga Media) owns the IP and controls who gets to use it, specialist manufacturers produce the physical goods under that licence, and the resulting product range spans everything from a museum-grade silver trophy to a mass-market toy figure to a small pin badge, all under the same licensing umbrella but produced by completely different kinds of manufacturers suited to completely different products.

Am Ball’s own Meisterschale line sits at the collectibles end of that range: licensed miniature replicas and pins referencing the trophy Koch & Bergfeld produces for the Bundesliga, not a claim to have any role in producing the actual competition trophy itself. Our breakdown of how official trophy replicas are actually manufactured covers that production process in more detail, separate from this piece’s focus on the licensing structure itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Bundesliga make the Meisterschale trophy itself?

No. The Bundesliga commissions it. Bremen silversmiths Koch & Bergfeld designed the trophy’s most recent expansion in April 2026 and have serviced it since; the original was designed by Elisabeth Treskow in 1949.

What is Bundesliga Media?

The Bundesliga’s commercial and digital arm, formed in May 2026 from the merger of Bundesliga International and DFL Digital Sports, along with parts of DFL GmbH. It now centrally handles media rights, sponsorship, and licensing for the Bundesliga.

Is Am Ball involved in producing the real Meisterschale?

No. Am Ball is an official Bundesliga licensee producing miniature replicas, pin badges, and keychains referencing the Meisterschale and the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup, not the full-size competition trophies themselves, which Koch & Bergfeld manufactures directly for the Bundesliga.

What’s the difference between Bundesliga commercial licensing and club licensing?

Commercial licensing covers merchandise, sponsorship, and IP rights, match balls, toys, collectibles. Club licensing is an unrelated compliance system determining whether a club meets the financial and sporting criteria required to compete in the Bundesliga each season. The two share a name but nothing else.

Who else holds an official Bundesliga licence?

Adidas returned as official match ball supplier for 2026-27 with the TORFABRIK ball. Playmobil became an official licensee for the same season, producing 198 individually licensed Bundesliga player figures. Am Ball holds licensee status for collectibles including trophy replicas, pins, and keychains.

Conclusion

A trophy that looks unchanged from the outside was just taken apart and rebuilt by a silversmith in Bremen, under a licensing structure that now runs through a company that didn’t exist under its current name six months ago. That’s the part of Bundesliga merchandising that stays invisible from the stands: a title celebration involves at least three separate licensed manufacturers, a rights holder that owns none of the physical objects, and a licensing system with a name that has nothing to do with whether a club is even allowed to play.

To understand how a licensing relationship like this actually works in practice, reach out to our team.