Go West, Bayern Munich!

"It was great, I think the stadium was just about packed," new Bayern striker Robert Lewandowski gushed after his team's match against Mexico's historic Deportivo Guadalajara team. "The mood was really great."

Bayern Munich may have only won 1-nil against Chivas, and the Bavarian team may have scuffed about a bit listlessly on the field, but their US fans at Red Bull Stadium in New Jersey didn't seem to mind.

Defender David Alaba said it was enjoyable to sense so much support in the US. "We didn't have the feeling we were playing an away game," he said.

A clever business move

Bayern Munich's decision to journey to the US is no coincidence. According to The New York Times Germany's mightiest club picked an "appropriate time" to begin building a year-round presence in the United States.

In fact this year's World Cup in Brazil has given soccer a huge boost in the US. Nationwide, Americans got together for soccer parties, while thousands gathered to watch the matches on giant TV screens. Even US president Barack Obama followed the games on TV.

Soccer has about 60 million fans in the US, according to Rudolf Vidal, managing director of Bayern's new United States division. The club estimates that about 16 million are Bayern Munich fans. Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge sent Vidal and three colleagues to New York to help give the German club a toehold in the land of unlimited possibilities.

That is not an easy task in a country where soccer traditionally plays second fiddle to American football and baseball. But Rummenigge and soccer legend Franz Beckenbauer see great potential for a lucrative business with the sale of merchandizing products in the US.

The Bavarians' nine-day US tour, which includes numerous promotional events as well as soccer matches in New Jersey and Oregon, is part of the game plan. German luxury carmaker Audi, also currently trying to conquer the US market, is the club's partner in the US, and sponsor of the tour.

The club's sports director Matthias Sammer said the sponsor was "an absolutely reliable partner" for lending its name to the tour. "We're happy to be playing a neat one-two pass with them," Sammer said.

Live broadcasts of Bayern's tour matches on ESPN, America's most popular sports channel, are set to reach millions of viewers in the US and 138 other countries.

Champions on whirlwind tour

The game on Wednesday in Portland, Oregon, between Bayern and a star-studded MLS All-Stars team is expected to garner even more attention, especially when Bastian Schweinsteiger and several other players from the World Cup winning German national team join the line-up. After all, Rummenigge says, Germany's champions are an "asset we can show off."

All the same, a short tour in the US before returning to Germany's Bundesliga grind is no guarantee for commercial success. Clubs like Manchester United, Real Madrid and AC Milan are already well-established names here.

And the club still needs time to settle in, clearly. Currently interviews with Vidal, the head of Bayern Munich's newly-opened office on New York's Lexington Avenue, are not being granted. The club says it wants to wait until it has really accomplished something in the US, before it starts talking.