Champions League: German women's football in crisis?

It's been a very long time since things have looked so bleak for women's football in Germany, with the latest blow being the fact that no Bundesliga teams has managed to last beyond the group stage of the Champions League.

"It breaks my heart a little to see no German team in the knockout phase," lamented longtime national team goalkeeper Almuth Schult.

"It's brutal. It's sad," said Bayern Munich coach Alexander Straus after an own goal in the 88th minute saw his team draw 2-2 against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday night. The result saw Bayern drop to third in Group C and fail to advance to the quarterfinals.

Historically poor performance

For their part, Eintracht Frankfurt went into Thursday's 5-0 win over Rosengard having already been eliminated, and last year's finalists, Wolfsburg, hadn't even qualified for the group stage in the first place. This is the first time since the UEFA Women's Cup was rebranded as the Champions League in 2009 that no German team has made it to the knockout phases.

These disappointments come on the heels of last summer's disastrous World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, where the Germans failed to advance beyond the group stage for the first time in the history of the tournament.

Germany weren't particularly convincing under interim coach Horst Hrubesch late last year either, but at least they managed to finish first in their Nations League group, retaining a chance to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

Moving towards a more professional, 16-team league?

With such disappointing results comes criticism, and now some are wondering whether the Bundesliga, in its current form as a 12-team league, is one of the problems. No team other than Bayern or Wolfsburg has won the Bundesliga since 2012 when Turbine Potsdam won their last championship.

Among those now calling for changes to make the Bundesliga more attractive and competitive is Eintracht Frankfurt CEO Axel Hellmann.

"We need to get to a 16-team league very quickly and do more in terms of professionalization," Hellmann told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. "Maybe we can break up the system and create more excitement so that we can reach a wider audience."

Although women's Bundesliga attendance is up, it lags way behind the crowds drawn by the men. For this season's matches up to the winter break, the league had an average attendance of 2,990, up from 2,723 over all of last season. By comparison, the men's Bundesliga had an average attendance of 42,407 in 2022-23.

Big TV revenue jump still a comparable pittance

The women's Bundesliga got a major shot in the arm from the new television contract, which came into force at the start of this season. The deal, worth €5.17 million ($5.6 million) annually, represents a 16-fold increase over the previous contract. This puts the women's Bundesliga in third place in terms of TV revenue behind England (around €9 million) and Spain (around €8 million).

Again though, the women remain way behind the men, as the rights deal covering the 36 clubs in the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 is raking in €1.165 billion this season.

Still, some women's teams do benefit indirectly from this deal, as men's Bundesliga clubs Bayern Munich, Wolfsburg, Eintracht Frankfurt, Hoffenheim, Werder Bremen, Bayer Leverkusen, Cologne, RB Leipzig and Freiburg use part of this revenue to help finance their women's teams. Women's Bundesliga sides Nuremberg (Bundesliga 2) and Duisburg (third division) also benefit from having men's clubs behind them. The only independent women's club left in the Bundesliga is SGS Essen.

Going it alone without the DFB?

But while having a men's Bundesliga club helping to finance a women's team may help in the short term, Axel Hellmann is convinced that this is not the way of the future. He also hastens to add that making it to the Champions League does not bring the financial windfall one might think.

"The expenses we incur almost completely consume the UEFA payout," he said. "You don't earn any money with the women's Champions League."

Therefore, the Eintracht Frankfurt CEO is calling for major structural changes to make the women's Bundesliga more financially sustainable and is not ruling out the league breaking off from the DFB (German FA) and going it alone.

"It's not just me, but also other professional clubs who are grumbling and dissatisfied," he said in the Frankfurter Rundschau interview. If the necessary improvements prove not to be possible within the DFB, "we have to think about organizing women's football independently," said Hellmann, who also stepped in as co-CEO of the German Football League (DFL) on an interim basis last season.

The DFB throws shade

However, DFB Managing Director Holger Blask, who oversees marketing and sales at the German FA, is critical of Hellmann's ideas, especially when it comes to expanding the women's league.

"If we were to play with 16 teams today, the quality would not increase tomorrow," Blask said.

He also noted that a sudden increase of four teams would logically mean a smaller piece of the TV revenue pie for each of the original 12 — at least until a new contract is negotiated ahead of the 2026-27 season.

This article was originally published in German.