Ownership of Frauen-Bundesliga is being taken over by the clubs, who want to keep pace with game in England
“The reason we started this whole process was a fear of losing more and more the connection to the top,” says Katharina Kiel, the head of women’s football at Eintracht Frankfurt.
Alongside her role at one of Germany’s more successful women’s football teams, Kiel was this month elected president of the new Women’s Bundesliga Association, after all 14 clubs agreed to split from the German Football Federation (DFB) and form their own committee to take ownership of the league to further commercialise and grow it, with the 2027-28 campaign a targeted start date.
In a model similar to what happened in England with the Women’s Super League a couple of years ago, there are many hurdles to overcome, but Kiel, 33 and a former Bundesliga player, explains what the plan is.
“We started this process two years ago, so it’s been going on a while,” she says. “We managed to touch on certain things, such as our competitiveness internationally, because as you know Germany was a very successful place for women’s football, but there became a point when England in particular stepped up and managed their development really well to grow quickly.
