Katharina Kiel, president of Germany's newly founded Frauen-Bundesliga association FBL e.V. and director of women's football at Eintracht Frankfurt, is overseeing one of the most closely watched transformations in German sport as the country's top women's flight moves to break away fully from the German Football Association, or DFB.
In December, the 14 clubs of the Frauen-Bundesliga split from the DFB with considerable noise to found the FBL. A transitional season has just begun, and from the 2027/28 season the league will market and organise itself independently under a foundational agreement with the federation.
Kiel said the league intended to swim free of men's football.
Kiel's office, in the building that once served as DFB headquarters on Frankfurt's Otto-Fleck-Schneise, previously belonged to Christian Seifert, the former Bundesliga chief executive, and Oliver Bierhoff, the former Germany team manager, two of the most powerful men in German football. Before a recent photo shoot, Kiel quickly cleared a few sensitive documents from the desk. At Eintracht Frankfurt, she leads the club's women's football department together with Babett Peter.
A rising influence in German football
The newspaper Die Welt placed Kiel 45th in a ranking of the 50 most influential figures in German football. Axel Hellmann, Eintracht Frankfurt's board chief, said she was extremely knowledgeable, committed and superbly connected with the clubs. Kiel is a former Bundesliga player for Hoffenheim.
Hellmann and Jan-Christian Dreesen, chairman of Bayern Munich's board, have so far been seen as the more prominent voices of the revolution in women's football, but Kiel is described as measured yet assertive, someone who works tirelessly and doggedly in the background on both her sport and her career.
From Kazakhstan to figure skating champion
Kiel's parents arrived in Germany from Kazakhstan with two suitcases and built up a company in the geothermal energy sector. She said hard work had been instilled in her from the cradle, precisely because the family had no connections to fall back on. She said she had not grown up in wealth, but with a great wealth of values.
As a young athlete, Kiel first channelled her ambition into figure skating and became Hessian state champion. She later switched to football, where her discipline again carried her far. She described herself at the time as extremely resilient, very athletic and combative, though not the most technically gifted, more of a workhorse. She fought her way back after a first torn cruciate ligament, but doctors advised her against continuing to play after a second.
Learning from Christian Seifert
Kiel trained in football management as a scholarship holder recommended by the DFL under Seifert, the former league boss whose experience she said can only help the new association. She said she counted herself lucky to be able to ask him for advice sometimes, noting that he had been 35 when he took over the office she now occupies, while she is 34, so he could relate to many of the challenges of building up the league, something she valued greatly.
Plans to invest up to 800 million euros
The FBL turned down a 100 million euro offer from the DFB over eight years for a joint venture. Kiel said the league instead intended to invest between 700 and 800 million euros in its clubs over the next eight years.
Women's football remains loss-making overall. The then twelve Frauen-Bundesliga clubs spent almost 70 million euros in the 2024/25 season against revenue of just 43 million euros.
TV rights and other challenges
The league faces its first major test this autumn, when it independently negotiates new television contracts due to take effect from the 2027/28 season. Until now, the DFB handled these negotiations through marketing expert Holger Blask. Current annual broadcasting revenue stands at 5.17 million euros gross.
Kiel has not yet spoken publicly about details such as a possible introduction of championship playoffs. A second major task is appointing an executive management team, a process expected to take a few more months. Time is pressing, as several national team players moved abroad this summer.
Building an identity for the league
Kiel prefers to focus on fundamentals, including youth development, where she said the league still lacks proper structures, and on defining what the Frauen-Bundesliga stands for. She said nobody had really asked that question in the past, and that looking back, much of the league's development had happened step by step, often driven by the next concrete challenge rather than a long-term plan. She said that if they managed to build a distinct identity for the league, she was confident that stars would consciously choose to play in the Frauen-Bundesliga.
