A Dortmund startup has won Oliver Kahn as an advertising testimonial. He was convinced by Skynopoly’s idea: property owners sell overflight rights to drone operators.
World goalkeeper, national player and ex-CEO of FC Bayern Oliver Kahn and Dr. Conrad Dreier, notary and founder of Skynopoly. Skynopoly
Oliver Kahn, the Oliver Kahn, the Titan, looks out the window of a high-rise building. His voice from the off: “In my career it has always been ‘the sky is not the limit’ for me. That’s right.” Then he turns around, his look serious. “What if heaven is just the beginning? If I can make money from the sky over my property?”
Wouldn’t that be great? That’s exactly what the startup promises, which has been on its homepage for a few days now Video of the scene described above can be seen: Kahn above the roofs of Munich talks about how he wants to make money from the sky as a Skynopoly customer. Because: The platform acquires overflight rights from residential property owners like Kahn and sells them to operators of commercial drone fleets. The property owners receive 50 percent of the income.
So: in the future. There is still no brisk drone traffic over German residential areas and no delivery drones that would pay to use airways. Kahn knows that too, but he is sure: it will come. “Many things will change in our future and faster than we think,” he says in the video.
Lawyer, notary and founder as a part-time job
Behind Skynopoly and also the video with the boat making money in the sky is Dr. Conrad Dreier, a notary from Dortmund and part-time founder. A man with – at least that’s what it looks like – inventiveness and the courage to take long shots. Because: Before him, he says, no one had ever come up with the idea that the air above private property could simply be commercialized. Do you want to fly through the airspace above my garden? Of course, but only for a fee!
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The basis of this business model is the Air Traffic Regulations (LuftVO), which regulates the operation of unmanned aircraft over residential properties under paragraph 21. Unlike manned aircraft, the consent of the property owner is required if a drone of a certain size wants to fly over private areas. That’s the reason why Lufthansa and Co. have always flown over gardens without paying – but things can be different with delivery drones, explains the Skynopoly founder.
Several thousand euros per year are conceivable
Now you could of course say: who knows? If, for example, Amazon delivers packages by drone in the future, they could simply fly over the streets – i.e. use the paths that drivers currently take. But the operator of Skynopoly considers this to be rather unlikely: “Since the charm of drones lies in the use of direct air travel, the use of the public road network is rather uninteresting for the operators of logistics drone fleets,” explains Dreier in the FAQs on the website Skynopoly.
In an interview with Gründerszene he sounds completely transparent: Yes, Skynopoply is a bet on the future. But it costs property owners nothing to enter into this. You can already transfer overflight rights to Skynopoly free of charge, explains Dreier. If an airway were to be built over the property at some point, the owners would receive money. “I once did a model calculation; it could be a significant four-digit amount per year for residential property owners,” says Dreier. By the way, the size of the garden is irrelevant; all property owners along an air road would have an equal share.
Kahn is a customer
In any case, Oliver Kahn did it, says Conrad Dreier. He is a Skynopoly customer, so he transferred the rights to the air above his garden to the startup. It was also important to the ex-goalkeeper that it became clear that he was only a testimonial for a company whose product he also believed in.
The contact with Kahn came about solely on the initiative of the Skynopoly founder, when he was looking for prominent supporters to promote his idea: “I wanted to have someone who everyone in Germany knew, and Oliver Kahn was at the top of my list.” The fact that he was actually able to inspire him quite quickly was “a happy coincidence”. An email to the athlete’s management, later a video call with Kahn himself, which went “very positively”, and a little later Conrad Dreier drove to Munich for filming.
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The result is both the image spot described at the beginning and an explanatory video in which Kahn sits down and explains how Skynopoly works: “Did you know that you can make money with the sky above your property?” he asks. “In the future, the sky will be used for logistics drones and air taxis. It sounds like science fiction – but it’s not.” Dreier met Kahn in person for the first time while filming. “I found him to be a very likeable, down-to-earth person,” reports Dreier. “And interested in a wide range of things.”
Of course, Dreier cannot say exactly when Kahn and the other Skynopoly customers can expect to receive income. But he is observing the progress on the market with benevolence: In addition to Amazon with Prime Air, there are also European providers such as Manna from Ireland or Wingcopter in Germany, which are making progress in drone delivery. He assumes that the first delivery drones will be flying over Germany in three years – perhaps also over Oliver Kahn’s garden.