‘Women's football is one of the three most important global growth areas for SPORTFIVE.’
Women's football has developed noticeably in recent years and is increasingly establishing itself in the commercial sports landscape - including in Germany. In its latest study ‘The Rise of Woman Sports’, Nielsen reports that there are already over 20 million people interested in women's football in Germany. Advertisers are also becoming increasingly aware of the topic and sponsorship partnerships in this area are becoming more and more interesting for brands. As a leading international sports marketing agency, SPORTFIVE has long recognised this development. In an interview with Beyond-the-Match, Hendrik Schiphorst, Managing Director of SPORTFIVE Germany, explains how SPORTFIVE approaches the topic strategically and why women's football can be so special and unique for advertisers.
In this Insight:
The numbers speak for themselves
FC Barcelona's women sold out their home stadium in 2022 with over 90,000 fans.
The German women's national team played in front of a sell-out crowd (43,953 spectators) shortly before the Olympics in Hanover.
In both 2022 and 2023, the sports broadcasts with the most TV viewers in Germany across all genders were matches involving the women's national football team.
Successes such as the German national team's bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Paris fuelled the positive development of women's football in Germany.
Mr Schiphorst, why is women's football interesting for you as a sports rights marketer right now?
Women's football didn't just become interesting for us recently. Like many other developments, we have been observing women's sport in general and women's football in particular for quite some time and have, for example, already successfully concluded over 150 sponsorship partnerships for rights holders in women's football in Germany in the last two years. We have also been able to make our mark internationally, for example when I think of the partnerships we initiated for Olympique Lyon's women's team with adidas and Mastercard or LinkedIn at the Women's EURO 2022 in England, but also the activation of Lego or our work in the commercial sector for the North American Women's Soccer League or the Copa Americana Feminine.
How sustainable do you think this development will be?
Based on these observations and our close relationships with many clubs, associations and athletes, we know that the professionalisation of women's football has made great strides in recent years and is becoming increasingly attractive to spectators. This is evidenced by lighthouse deals between Google Pixel and the DFB as well as current expert surveys such as those conducted by SponsorPulse/WARC Media, in which, for example, women's sport (and women's football in particular) is defined as the No. 1 growth area in global sponsorship. This is also in line with our discussions with brands and, of course, the rising TV viewer figures and social media reach, particularly in women's football. We are very certain that this is not just a trend, but that fan interest will continue to grow in Germany and worldwide.
Over 20 M
Germans are interested in Women's Football (Source: Nielsen Sports)
No 1
growth area in global sponsorship is women's sport (Source: SponsorPulse/WARC Media)
14
women's football teams in Germany are exclusively marketed by SPORTFIVE
What impact does this development have on SPORTFIVE's strategy?
As a leading international sports rights marketer, it is crystal clear for us to be part of this development. On the one hand, women's football is currently one of the three most important global growth areas for SPORTFIVE with its own multinational competence team, which reports directly to our global management. Secondly, we have recently set up our own sales team in Germany, with which we want to send a clear commitment to our brand and rights holder partners and the market on the topic of women's football. At the same time, we also believe that we can justifiably claim that we are already the largest women's football marketer in the world thanks to the more than 150 sponsorship deals we have made and the large number of our exclusive marketing partnerships in women's football - in Germany alone, we market 14 women's football teams in sponsorship across all leagues and the women's national team in hospitality exclusively.
You can find out more about the women's football hub in the press release.
Women's sport addresses many social issues and also different target groups than men's sport. Does that also play a role in your decisions?
The business perspective is the main driver for us to continue to believe in women's football and to invest in personnel. It is the most important perspective for us, but of course not the only one. In the context of social change, the demand for visibility and promotion of women, and therefore also of women's sport, is becoming ever louder. We also want to help shape this change and have set ourselves internal diversity and equality goals in which female employees play a major role. Because we all feel how important the topic is for our employees in addition to its business relevance, we would like to continue fuelling it with our own content formats, such as our podcast about women in sport with Lisa Ramuschkat, in addition to our event commitments such as at ‘FUSSBALL KANN MEHR‘ as part of this year's Hamburg Sports Summit.
‘Thanks to the more than 150 sponsorship deals we have made and the large number of our exclusive marketing partnerships in women's football, SPORTFIVE is already the largest women's football marketer in the world.’
Hendrik Schiphorst
Very exciting. In contrast to esports, which established itself in sponsorship a few years ago and brought completely new sports with it, women's football is the same sport as classic men's football. This always harbours the risk of direct comparison with the men. In addition, it is not clear whether women's games will ever achieve the same speed, athleticism and physicality as men's games. Do you think women's football will establish itself anyway?
Thank you for bringing this up, because we often hear this argument against women's football and sport. We are also often asked when women's football will be as popular as its male counterpart. We are not fans of making these comparisons. For one thing, it is somewhat disproportionate to compare women's football with men's football, which has already been promoted for decades. Secondly, despite being the same sport, women's football has completely different characteristics that interest spectators. For example, according to various recent studies from 2024 by UEFA or the GWI, women's football is perceived as fairer, more approachable and more family-friendly than men's football. From the perspective of the football fans surveyed, women's football also differs from its male counterpart in terms of values such as diversity, equality and empowerment. This means that it is often better suited to brands for storytelling or purpose-orientated partnerships or CSR topics in the aforementioned value categories, for example. All in all, men's football is clearly still the backbone of our sponsorship business in Germany and this will certainly never change. However, we can already see that we are reaching some brands with women's football that we may no longer be able to convince with men's football themes. That makes the topic very interesting for us.
You mentioned that, in addition to women's football, you also want to help shape women's sport as a whole. What does that look like in concrete terms?
There are several approaches to this. For example, we offer rights holders from all media-relevant sports programmes to help them develop their commercial strategy in this area, to further develop and commercialise the USPs of their women's sports teams, but also to learn from them and take something away for our later work in sales.
In addition, our extremely important cooperation partners DHB and DBB are facing a total of three major events in handball and basketball (IHF Women's Handball World Championship 2025, FIBA Women's Eurobasket 2025, FIBA Women's World Cup 2026) in the next two years with the realisation of the World and European Championships in Germany. We are planning campaigns for these events together with the federations and respective sponsoring partners in order to create as much awareness as possible and, of course, to find new partners who want to invest in women's handball and women's basketball and utilise these unique global event stages in Germany.
At the same time, we have already created some strong activations with brands in the context of women's sport - such as with New Balance on the topic of ‘Female Football Culture’, the DFB and Vorwerk or the DBB and Kellogg's. Here, too, we currently see ourselves as a leading agency in the German sports sector.
Thank you very much for the interview.
Part 3 of the interview with Karsten Bentlage on activating partnerships in women's football will follow shortly.
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