Bayern Munich make major change to shine light on controversial £30m Arsenal deal

German champions Bayern Munich have taken steps to remove the visibility of their partnership with Visit Rwanda, months after Arsenal fans had protested about the Gunners’ own deal with the tourism organisation.

The African country’s tourism board has embarked on a significant marketing campaign involving football in recent years, having started its partnership with Arsenal in 2018, with other deals following with both Bayern and Paris Saint-Germain.

But the deals have come back into sharp focus for some fan groups following increased violence in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where authorities say 7,000 people have been killed since January. Rwanda have been accused by the Congolese of arming M23 rebels and sending troops to support the militants, something that Rwanda has denied despite assertions to the contrary by both the United Nations and United States.

Earlier this season a section of the Arsenal fan base created ‘Gunners for Peace’, a group that called on the Gunners not to renew the deal that it has with Visit Rwanda, which is worth a reported £10million per year, with armbands distributed outside the Emirates ahead of the Champions League semi-final clash with Paris Saint-Germain back in April.

Visit Rwanda has continued as a key commercial partner with Arsenal into the new 2025/26 season, with the branding visible on home and away shirts.

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Bayern Munich officials came under similar pressure from their supporters earlier this year, with banners unfurled at the Allianz Arena back in February in protest against the deal.

While the club, who have previously dismissed allegations of sportswashing when they inked the deal with the tourism board in 2023, had no shirt branding it did have a visible partnership at the stadium with Visit Rwanda, something that is to be stripped back two years into a five-year deal, with a different agreement now reached.

A statement from Bayern chief executive Jan-Christian Dreesen read: “In constructive talks about our future direction, we agreed that a very special part of our relationship with [the Rwanda Development Board] was the developmental nature of our work in Kigali through the FC Bayern Academy.

“We are therefore transforming our commercial partnership into a talent programme and expanding the FC Bayern Academy in [Rwanda's capital] Kigali together with the RDB as both a football and social initiative. This remains perfectly aligned to our strategic objective of developing playing talent in Africa.”

The process to drop the Visit Rwanda branding at the Allianz Arena will be a transitional one.

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