For the front office, a DEL2 game day starts long before the opening face-off. Which partner gets which LED board? Who is sitting in the box? Has the invoice for the jersey sponsorship gone out yet? At many clubs, the answers are scattered across spreadsheets, folders and inboxes. That is exactly where the new partnership between the DEL2 and Paktum comes in.
Key takeaways
The DEL2 (Deutsche Eishockey Liga 2, Germany's second-tier professional ice hockey league) and Paktum have entered a multi-year partnership.
Paktum supports the league in managing sponsorship, contracts and rights.
The Bietigheim Steelers and EHC Freiburg are already working with Paktum.
The league aims to offer its clubs a shared tool for managing their partners.
What the DEL2 has set out to do
The partnership is designed to run for several years. Together with René Rudorisch, we have spent the past few weeks defining three priorities:
Structure league marketing: Manage the league's sponsorship, contracts and rights in one place
Implement digital initiatives: Simplify processes across the league and reduce manual work
Support clubs consistently: Offer a tool that every club in the league can use
“We are very pleased about the partnership with Paktum. We are enthusiastic about the product and convinced that it will help us modernise and expand our sponsorship activities. The Paktum tool is extremely helpful for smaller organisations. On top of that, the automations are extremely efficient and ensure a clear overview at all times, even for larger organisations,” says René Rudorisch, Managing Director of the DEL2.
From the boards to the invoice
In ice hockey, a lot revolves around the arena: boards, on-ice advertising, boxes, hospitality. Paktum covers all of it:
Contracts and deliverables: Every partner with their agreements and open tasks
Rights management: Available and sold advertising space, LED boards and hospitality at a glance
Arena planner: Plan the arena visually, from the boards to the boxes
Invoices: Generated automatically from contract data, including in the ZUGFeRD standard
Player contracts: Roster and contracts in the same system
The first clubs: Bietigheim and Freiburg
The Bietigheim Steelers were our very first ice hockey club. Together with Gregor, Emma and Henrik, we transferred all of their data to Paktum within a few days, right in the middle of the changeover between seasons. Day-to-day operations continued without interruption.
“Paktum saves us time above all when checking for unsold inventory and viewing sponsorship statistics. Invoicing runs much faster and more reliably with Paktum, and we have more time to focus on acquiring new sponsors,” says Gregor Rustige, Managing Director of the Bietigheim Steelers.
EHC Freiburg joined shortly afterwards. There, too, contracts, deliverables, advertising space, LED boards, hospitality and invoices are now managed digitally in one place.
“Paktum makes our day-to-day sponsorship work enormously easier. What is especially valuable to us is that all information about our sponsors is bundled in one central place. That way, everyone involved can see at any time what has already been discussed or implemented and which next steps are coming up. This creates more transparency and better internal coordination and saves us an enormous amount of time in our daily work,” says Janis Wagner, Commercial Director at EHC Freiburg.
A common foundation across the league
In the end, every DEL2 club sells similar things: boards, boxes, jersey space, game day activations. Even so, almost every club has developed its own lists and processes for this. When clubs work with the same system, it becomes much easier to learn from one another. A rights catalogue or contract template that has proven itself in Bietigheim can easily be adopted in Freiburg or elsewhere.
“The partnership with the DEL2 is another important step for us towards a system that meets the requirements of the entire sports sector. We look forward to working together and to our shared mission of creating structure and minimising manual work through our automated document and invoice generation,” says Patrick Laux, Founder and Managing Director of Paktum.
Next steps
The DEL2 is our first league in ice hockey. Over the coming months, we want to bring more clubs on board with Paktum and learn as much as possible from the day-to-day work of their front offices.
Are you responsible for sponsorship at a DEL2 club? Book a demo. Ideally, bring your current partner list along and we will show you right away how it looks in Paktum.