Sportfive, the international sports marketing giant, has created a new dedicated women’s soccer sales division as it seeks to become the leading agency in the space.
The new arm will be led by Jessica Stommel, who will report to Stefan Heitfeld, senior vice president of regional and team sales at Sportfive Germany.
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Stommel's team will focus solely on women's soccer and continue to expand the business area. It will be supported by Sportfive’s entire sales and activation network in Germany.
Sportfive describes women’s soccer as “one of its three most important global growth areas.”
Stommel has been responsible for the marketing of women's soccer at the agency since November 2023.
Previously, she worked as a sponsorship and marketing manager in various positions internationally in equestrian sports.
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By GlobalDataSportfive claims to have already concluded over 150 sponsorship deals for rights holders in women's soccer in the last two years.
In Germany alone, the sports marketing firm exclusively markets 14 women's soccer teams, including the women's sides of Bayer Leverkusen, VfB Stuttgart, Hamburger SV, Hertha BSC, Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04.
In addition, Sportfive works exclusively with various bodies in Germany, such as the women's national teams of the DFB and the German basketball and handball federations.
The company also has relationships with the hugely successful women's team of Olympique Lyonnais, the NWSL in the US, and UEFA, as well as the US women's national team, the English Women's Super League and the women's teams of Chelsea, Arsenal and Aston Villa.
Hendrik Schiphorst, managing director of Sportfive Germany, said: “By establishing our own sales team, we want to send a clear commitment to our brand and rights holder partners and the market on the subject of women's football.
“Due to the sponsorship deals we have made and the large number of our exclusive marketing partnerships in women's football, we can definitely say that we are already the largest women's football marketer in the world.
“The business perspective is the main motivation for us to invest in women's football and in personnel. It is the most important perspective for us, but of course not our only one on the subject.
“The demand for visibility and promotion of women and thus also of women's sport is becoming ever louder. We too would like to help shape this change and have set ourselves internal diversity and equality goals in which female employees play a major role.”
Heitfeld added: "While we used to see more often that brands actually wanted to invest in the men's team of a rights holder, and the respective women's team 'just went along with it', today we are seeing more and more specific investments by advertisers explicitly in the women's teams.
“And from our point of view, this will continue to increase because advertisers can reach slightly different target groups – especially younger women and families – with different stories than in men's football.”
