Why German women’s football is not yet marketable – Axel Hellmann

 

BERLIN – German women’s football faces important decisions over its future because it remains “a subsidy business” and can not to be marketed on its own, according to German Football League (DFL) managing director Axel Hellmann.

“The whole product is not yet marketable at the moment,” Hellmann said at a women’s football strategy meeting organized by the nation’s football federation DFB which oversees the women’s game.

“We have to be clear about this: it’s a subsidy business. We have to realise that we have a lot of work to do, because at the moment women’s football accounts for one 50th of the revenue level of men’s football.”

Last season, women’s teams accumulated average debts of €1.5 million ($1.6 million). Attendance and TV viewership has risen this term, and Hellmann said that key decisions were required.

“Do we want a mature sports industry that is self-sustaining? Or do we want to be dependent on the profitability of men’s football?” he said.

From next season, after the relegation of former top side Turbine Potsdam, 11 of the 12 teams in the Bundesliga will also have teams in the men’s top flight.

Hellmann is also supervisory board spokesman at men’s and women’s Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt, where he said they want to make a contribution in women’s football “so that it becomes a mature industry in its own right. That is why we are investing.”

However, he warned that the club does not want “the women’s standings to become a mirror image of men’s football.”