The Bundesliga is on the Verge of Becoming a Boring Monopoly

You've probably read about how well German soccer is managed, about the league's strong average attendance, the low ticket prices, the amount of home-grown talent, the relatively low debt, about how it's at once accessible to both families and hardcore fans. It's a great marketing message. As European leagues compete for international fans, this is how the Bundesliga sets itself apart from the competition—and England in particular, where ticket prices are out of control and the defending champions struggle to find warm bodies to fill the stands. The Bundesliga is Europe's one truly healthy league.

This is all true. But it glosses over maybe the most important detail when you're considering league health: The Bundesliga isn't competitive. At least not at the top. And aside from a few periods in which Bayern Munich has stumbled, it never really has been. And if Marco Reus—perhaps the league's best player—leaves Borussia Dortmund for Bayern Munich, as he's widely expected to do, the league, as a competitive venture, could be all but finished.

Consider the league's history. Bayern has won 23 of 50 Bundesliga titles. (It will probably win its 24th this season.) Put differently, Bayern wins the Bundesliga 46 percent of the time. The league's 17 other teams almost always look up at the Bavarians.

Of Europe's big three leagues, the Bundesliga is the least competitive when measured in this way. Since the establishment of a national league in England in 1888, Manchester United, England's winningest team, has captured 20 titles. That's 16 percent of the total. In Spain, things are worse than in England. Real Madrid has won 32 La Liga titles; Barca has 22. That's about 38 and 26 percent, respectively. In the Bundesliga, the teams just behind Bayern—BvB and Borussia Mönchengladbach—have each won five championships, or ten percent of the league's titles.

You might argue that recent history proves otherwise. The last ten years saw four different league champions in Germany. But that's not really the point. Bayern's supremacy is the problem. The club won six of those ten titles.

And by problem, I mean it's a problem for the league as it tries to market itself abroad. The Bundesliga might beat the hell out of the Premier League in terms of matchday experience, but the money is in television. On the one hand, it's great to have a flagship club like Bayern challenging for the Champions League every year. It's not great when the entire Bundesliga starts to resemble an extended training session for Bayern's Champions League run, as it did last year.

The Bundesliga currently earns about 70 Million Euros from international TV rights. "We expect in the next rights cycle, which starts in 15/16 that we will move to double this current figure, so we're speaking about 140 million or more," Jörg Daubitzer, the managing director of marketing for the The DFL, the organization that oversees Germany's top two leagues, said in a recent interview.

That's an admirable goal; 100% growth is a hedge fund manager's fever dream. But consider the Premier League currently earns about 864 million Euros per year from international television rights.

The Bundesliga is already at a disadvantage because of language, something it has helped mitigate with an excellent English-language web presence, but it will never catch up if the league itself is uncompetitive and—gasp!—boring.

But things are getting worse.

Two seasons ago, Bayern set the record for earliest league win, wrapping things up on the 28th of 34 matchdays. Last year, it broke that record by a day. In the process, it has dismantled its only recent rival, signing first Mario Götze and then Robert Lewandowski from Borussia Dortmund. If Reus joins, the talent monopoly will be complete.

The problem for Dortmund is that Reus has a 25 million Euro release clause in his contract that will activate at the end of the season. Dortmund have reportedly offered him a massive raise and a 10 million Euro signing bonus, if he re-signs without the release clause. But the team is currently a smoldering wreck, sitting at the of the table with just seven points. If Dortmund can't secure a Champions League spot—no easy task, at this point—it will be nearly impossible to keep Reus.

As a neutral fan and German resident, I can testify that there are a lot of great things about the Bundesliga. Mid-table, it's the strongest in Europe. And the lower leagues are amazing. But it would be nice to watch early season matches without knowing who will win—and I'm not talking about winning the match, I'm talking about winning the league. And, less selfishly, as leagues continue to monetize international revenue sources, I'd like to see the Bundesliga compete with the Premier League. Weirdly, in this situation, that might mean the best thing to do for Bundesliga would be to sell its best player, Reus, to an English club.

So Marco, if you're listening: If you can't stay with Dortmund, pick a Manchester club. Pick Arsenal. Hell, even go to PSG. But please, for the good of Germany and of the league, go anywhere but Munich.