Planning for two leagues: Schalke CFO Christina Rühl-Hamers at Frankfurt School

By the end of May, it will be clear in which league German football club Schalke 04 will play after the summer break. Since the club is currently ranked last place of the first league, Christina Rühl-Hamers, Schalke board member and responsible for finance, personnel, and legal affairs, needs to prepare, among other things, two scenarios and corresponding financing plans for both leagues. These must be approved by the DFL (German Football League) – a prerequisite for a Bundesliga club to be allowed to play at all.

The guests listening to Christina Rühl-Hamers’ evening lecture in the packed room – students, alumni, friends as well as professors and staff of Frankfurt School – learned that Schalke faced fluctuations in sales revenues from 375 million EUR in the 2018/19 season (1st League and participation in the Champions League) to 179 million EUR (2020/21 season in the 1st League, influenced by the Corona pandemic, relegation season) and 116 million EUR in the 2021/22 season (2nd League). Revenues from media rights, for example, are linked to the league in which one plays: Higher league = more revenues. Football clubs generate further revenue, of course, from ticket sales or catering during matches – when there was no match operation during the corona pandemic, these sources naturally dried up as well. The design of employment contracts with players is an adjusting screw to control finances of a football club.

Data, data, data

How significant is the final score of a match in assessing the game and the individual contributions of the players? In the context of football reporting, there is more and more talk of so-called "Expected Goals" (XGoals). XGoals is a statistical model used to measure actual performances of teams and players. Parameters are, for example, the angle of the shot, the distance of the shooter from the goal, running speed, decisions in the interplay (is the best-positioned teammate always played?), the position of the goalkeeper or the presence between the shooter and the goal. This creates another, albeit hypothetical, table, the XGoal table. In addition, detailed analyses can be made for individual matches about their performance and actual match behaviour.

Women's football

In the discussion, Christina Rühl-Hamers gave a detailed account of her daily routine, such as working with fans, interacting with the roughly 165,000 club’s members, and the challenges of interacting with the further diverse, multi-layered stakeholders. She shared her opinion on women's football, which she thinks is developing positively. It is not only a matter of buying the best players, but also of training good players to strengthen competition.