Henning Zülch, Moritz Palme, Benedikt Kirsch, Konstantin Krakau

• The management of football clubs has increasingly become a complex endeavour due to their evolution into multifaceted enterprises and the rising complexity of stakeholder relationships. Clubs vary in their ability to navigate this complexity, making management quality a decisive factor in gaining a competitive edge. The 2025 edition of the FoMa Q-Score ranking builds on the framework developed by ZÜLCH & PALME (2017), evaluating management quality across four key dimensions: Sporting Success, Financial Performance, Fan Welfare Maximization, and Leadership & Governance. These dimensions, as confirmed by leading football executives (CRUZ, SCHREGEL & ZÜLCH, 2022), provide an objective assessment of the critical success factors for professional football clubs. With the continued high level of competitiveness in the 2024/25 season and some unexpected finishes in the top rankings that qualify for the desired UEFA club competitions, the latest Bundesliga edition has once again underscored that it is not only a team’s sporting performance but also a club’s holistic management quality that helps achieve top-tier league positions. Especially looking at what’s ahead, the Deutsche Fußball Liga’s (DFL) unanimous decision for a new distribution mechanism for the first and second German division increasingly focusing on teams’ national TV coverage, club memberships and playing time of young talents requires management teams to revisit their strategies to achieve long-term competitiveness and financial stability. Against this backdrop, the FoMa Q-Score, acknowledged in both academic and practical spheres, continues to offer valuable insights enabling clubs to benchmark their strategies against peer group clubs and beyond, ensuring they maintain or enhance their competitive standing.