From the Basement to the Ground Floor
"We're pretty much on the ground floor right now. We've made it out of the basement, and there are still two floors above us that we'd love to reach one day."
Alf Mintzel, Head of B2B at SV Wehen Wiesbaden, does not go for grand statements. But he always finds the right ones.
A Hundred Years, One Club
There was no running water on the Halberg. Players who wanted to wash after a match brought a canister with them. The club that almost nobody knew back then was called SV Wehen Wiesbaden.
A hundred years later, the picture looks very different. The club has grown, left the Regionalliga behind, earned its first promotion to the 2. Bundesliga in 2007 and established itself as a permanent fixture in German professional football. The fact that the road there was anything but straightforward is part of the club's identity. And that is precisely what makes it special.
Alf Mintzel knows this journey from several angles. He spent nine years as a player on the pitch before moving into marketing and later into sales. For more than four years now, he has been responsible for the club's entire B2B business. He has not just watched the transformation unfold. He has helped shape it.
The Problem: A Network Without a Home
Running a football club today is a very different task from what it was twenty years ago. Around the sporting core, a much more complex world has emerged: partners, sponsors, hospitality clients, local businesses. A web of relationships that needs ongoing attention, not just on match days, but throughout the entire year.
SV Wehen Wiesbaden established its identity early, and it has held ever since. Not a polished, high-gloss world, but real people you actually know. Conversations that happen. A club where genuine closeness matters. But that very strength became a challenge: how do you scale personal relationships as the network grows? How do you keep partners actively engaged when you only meet them a handful of times a year? And how do you communicate reliably across a diverse network without calling everyone individually?
For a long time, there was no satisfying answer to that question.
A Turning Point: Covid
Then Covid arrived. And with it, the most defining moment Alf Mintzel has experienced in his time at the club.
Overnight, personal contact disappeared. No encounters at the stadium, no networking events, no conversations after the match. What had already been a challenge became an acute crisis: a club whose greatest strength was direct human connection suddenly found itself without a channel.
The question was no longer abstract. It was urgent: how do you stay in touch when you cannot see each other?
The answer came through Bundeling. Initially met with some scepticism internally, but within six months it had become a clear consensus. Bundeling is a community platform that brings clubs and their partner networks together in one central app: communication, event management, member profiles and exclusive content, fully branded in the club's own design, GDPR-compliant and available at any time. No additional email distribution lists, no WhatsApp chaos, no lost information. A home for the network.
And suddenly, even with stadiums closed, there was a way to stay connected with partners and sponsors.
What Bundeling Has Concretely Changed
With Bundeling, SV Wehen Wiesbaden has created an interface that reorganises the core of how the club operates.
Partners receive news before it appears anywhere else: player signings, behind-the-scenes insights, exclusive club updates delivered directly to their smartphones. The network is not just informed, it is included and feels like part of something. That difference is tangible, and it pays directly into partner loyalty.
Event management, previously a labour-intensive process spread across multiple channels, now runs centrally through the platform: invitations, registrations, attendee lists and follow-up communication all in one system. Queries decrease, effort goes down, quality goes up.
The day-to-day contact with partners and sponsors has also shifted. Instead of sporadic emails, there is now a permanent channel that keeps the network active between match days, through the summer break, even when there is no particular occasion.
Alf Mintzel puts it simply: Bundeling has created a very strong interface for staying in touch with partners at any time.
A Club as a Living Platform
What SV Wehen Wiesbaden is today goes well beyond a football club. It is a platform that brings people and businesses together, where networks form, collaborations grow and value is created for everyone involved. Bundeling is the digital backbone that makes this idea work in everyday life and allows it to scale.
Personal relationships have not been replaced in this process. They have been given a reliable foundation that holds even when people cannot be in the same room.
Where the Journey Goes
A hundred years of SV Wehen Wiesbaden is a moment worth pausing for. But not a reason to stop moving.
The network grows, and the demands grow with it. What will make a club successful in the future is the ability to connect people, partners and structures in a meaningful way. A platform like Bundeling is not a destination in that process. It is a tool that grows with the club and opens up new possibilities the more consistently it is used.
From the basement to the ground floor. Two more floors to go.
We are glad to be part of this journey.
