Women’s Bundesliga: Final Day Scenarios

The women’s Bundesliga took a historic step on Wednesday: the 14 clubs founded their own league association, the “FBL eV”. They chose Katharina Kiel, director of women’s football at Eintracht Frankfurt, at the top. She is supported by Veronica Saß, legal director of FC Bayern, and Florian Zeutschler, managing director of SGS Essen. “It is a day of departure,” said Kiel when she was introduced. “A little over a year and a half ago we started with the clear goal of organizing women’s football and giving it direction.”

The founding is the result of months of coordination between the clubs who wanted to combine their interests more closely. The move was originally supposed to have taken place on the campus of the German Football Association (DFB). In addition to the league association, a joint venture with the DFB, “FBL GmbH”, would also have been founded on the same day. But because a public dispute broke out over the conditions, the meeting was moved to a stadium box at Eintracht Frankfurt.

Both sides should each hold 50 percent of the shares in the planned company. The DFB would have invested 100 million euros in the women’s Bundesliga over a period of eight years, and the clubs would have provided a sum of between 300 and 700 million euros. But there was disagreement on the crucial details: the DFB wanted to establish a two-thirds majority for decisions in the executive committee, which had equal representation, and was also said to have brought up the possibility of leaving after four years.

“The idea with the DFB has not been destroyed,” said Kiel, who, however, emphasized: “At this point in time we cannot enter into the community because there are still open points between us and the DFB.” But: “We are in open-ended discussions.” Its president, Bernd Neuendorf, gave a greeting to the club representatives at the meeting, which, above all, represented a justification for the rift, as those at the meeting reported.

“I was in contact with him throughout the entire time. We also spoke on the phone when things got a little more edgy. I give him credit for the fact that he was not the one who was involved in the details of the negotiations,” said Eintracht boss Axel Hellmann, who had accused the association of not sticking to agreements, on the sidelines of the event. Hellmann considers a path without the DFB to be “not desirable”. However, the “understanding of roles” must be clarified. After all, it is the clubs that bear the entrepreneurial risk, create the infrastructure, train and employ the players, he said. “So it can’t be any other way that in the end we have to have the decision-making authority over development.”

It won’t work entirely without the support of the DFB: the league continues to rely on the association for issues such as refereeing, promoting young talent and sports jurisdiction. “We are primarily an interest group and pool the interests of the 14 clubs. Everything else lies with the DFB and, as long as nothing else is regulated, will continue to lie with the DFB,” said Kiel. Saß also emphasized that a “wild league” was not the goal.

The clubs are aware of the overlaps with the DFB. “We will inevitably talk to the DFB because, unlike the DFL, we have strong roots with the DFB,” explained Kiel. The German Men’s Football League is not the role model anyway. “It’s not about founding a DFL 2.0,” said Zeutschler, but rather preserving the values ​​of women’s football – and at the same time promoting the professionalization that is urgently needed.

It is still unclear what would happen if the intended joint venture fails. How would league operations work without the DFB? Would the clubs try to get an investor for the money that the DFB would have brought in? These questions remained open, as did the goals that the league association was striving for. In general, the members of the presidium hardly spoke about content at their presentation in Frankfurt. “The crucial thing is that the league association was founded,” said Zeutschler.