DFL Managing Director Axel Hellmann questioned the profitability of the women’s Bundesliga at a DFB event.
“The entire product is not yet marketable at the moment,” said the top official at a forum of the German Football Association on the “Strategy Women in Football FF27” in Cologne.
Women’s Bundesliga as grant business
“You have to be clear: this is a subsidy business. We have to realize that we have a lot to do because at the moment women’s football accounts for a 50th of the revenue level of men’s football,” explained Hellmann. Together with Oliver Leki from SC Freiburg, he is interim head of the men’s German Football League and at the same time spokesman for the board of Eintracht Frankfurt.
The season report for 2021/2022 shows that the twelve first division clubs write an average of 1.5 million euros per season for women. For Hellmann, a fundamental question arises in the women’s Bundesliga, which has seen large increases in attendance since the 2022 European Championship in England: “Do we want a mature sports industry that is self-sustaining? Or do we want dependence on the profitability of men’s football?” Said 51 -year-olds.
At Eintracht Frankfurt, they want to “contribute to making it a mature industry in women’s football. That’s why we’re investing.” But what the club doesn’t want is “that the table for women becomes a reflection of men’s football,” said Hellmann.