Can the Women’s Bundesliga Leverage the National Team’s World Cup for Success?

A good eleven months ago, the football world was still fine for Martina Voss-Tecklenburg. The national coach had just led the DFB selection to the European Championship final, in the Bundesliga the opening game between Eintracht Frankfurt and FC Bayern was planned in the large arena in Hesse.

You could read about the “upswing”, the “boom” of women’s football. The national team left Australia last weekend after a historically poor World Cup with unanswered questions about the internal relationship between the association and the Bundesliga clubs.

Wolfsburg: “Emphasize positive and sustainable development”

“First of all, my gut feeling would tell me that this doesn’t have a direct impact on certain things that we started,” Voss-Tecklenburg answered when asked about the possible negative effects of this preliminary round elimination. DFB President Bernd Neuendorf spoke on ZDF of a positive development that can no longer be stopped despite the “damper”. Reliable numbers for this prognosis will only be provided by the new Bundesliga season, which begins on September 15 with FC Bayern’s game at SC Freiburg.

The Munich champions club did not comment on questions about the World Cup before the final round, the dispute between Bayern and DFB due to players arriving later revealed unexpected differences. Voss-Tecklenburg and Joti Chatzialexiou, the sporting director of the national teams, rejected the fact that players from Munich rivals VfL Wolfsburg were preferred. “Ultimately you have to work together to have a strong national team,” said Chatzialexiou.

When asked by the German Press Agency, Champions League finalist Wolfsburg emphasized that “positive and sustainable development” should be emphasized and not an attempt “to question everything again after the DFB failure in Australia”. VfL announced a record in season ticket sales. “The popularity of the women’s Bundesliga – see audience figures and TV coverage 2022/2023 – is no longer solely due to the success of the women’s national team.”

The opening game of the previous season was kicked off in front of a record crowd of 23,200 spectators, and as the season progressed, the best figure was increased to 38,365 fans at the Frankfurters’ game at 1. FC Köln. “The league is still attractive after our national team left the World Cup, our players remain role models and popular figures,” said DFB Vice-President Sabine Mammitzsch on Monday and reported “numerous encouraging messages”.

A successful World Cup would have helped, “but I still believe that we as a league and all clubs can continue to write good numbers regardless of the performance,” said Freiburg department head Birgit Bauer-Schick. “We assume that the increased popularity of the Bundesliga will continue,” said a spokesman for Eintracht Frankfurt.

“The end of the World Cup doesn’t change anything about women’s football as a TV sport”

Because of the new TV contract, all 132 games of the coming season will be shown in the pay area as before on Magentasport and for the first time on the DAZN streaming service. 32 games will be broadcast on free-to-air television. “We believe that German women’s football has become so good as a TV sport that it remains attractive as a Bundesliga offer on MagentaSport. The early World Cup exit of the women’s national team will not change that,” said a Magenta spokesman.

If the assessments are correct, it would be the successful emancipation of the league from the national team, which has practically gone to the other extreme in men’s football: the success or failure of the national team of national coach Hansi Flick is of secondary importance for the sworn fans of the Bundesliga clubs, if at all.

“A tournament like this is always a great opportunity to create role models,” said Chatzialexiou. A few days after the start of the Bundesliga, the DFB selection will play in the Nations League for the first points in the new Nations League, which is enormously important because of the Olympic qualification.