Union Berlin Women - the German club attracting thousands

Fan-owned club Union Berlin has an ambitious vision - to change support for women's football in their country.

Since their women's team went professional in the 2023-24 season, they have earned back-to-back promotions and will make their debut in the Frauen-Bundesliga this year.

With an average crowd of 7,000 in the second tier last season, Union Berlin were the fourth-best supported women's club in Europe.

Their impact has been instant and this weekend they travelled to England for the first time, playing Aston Villa in a 1-0 pre-season friendly defeat.

"It's quite the club. It's very family-orientated," director of women's football Jennifer Zietz told BBC Sport.

"There are a lot of emotions for traditional soccer. We also have very crazy supporters!"

So what makes them so unique?

The Alten Forsterei - the club's 22,000-seater stadium - is "at the heart of the club" according to Zeitz.

"It gives you a very unique experience," she added.

It is not just any stadium, it is a stadium that was built by its supporters.

Short of cash and with a crumbling stadium that was unfit for purpose in 2008, almost 2,500 fans spent more than 140,000 hours transforming the Alten Forsterei into the arena it is today in south-east Berlin.

The women's team now play there too after fans of Union Berlin were coming out in their thousands to support the newly professional side.

"It's why the stadium is so important for the fans because they helped to build it," said Zeitz.

"They make no difference between the men and the women. No matter who is playing, they support the footballers on the pitch.

"The players play with their hearts and with intensity. These are the things the fans want to see too."

When the men's team qualified for European football in 2022, money came into the club and the fan-led board made the decision to pay its female players full-time contracts and salaries that were comparable to Germany's top clubs.

Head coach Ailien Poese - a former Union Berlin player, whose grandad also played for the club in the 1950s - arrived from the German Football Association.

Zietz followed as managing director, as did a host of big-name signings from Germany.

Promotion to the Frauen-Bundesliga was the goal. In their first professional year, they scored 145 goals and conceded five.

Last season, they secured promotion to the top tier with a 10–0 aggregate victory over SV Henstedt-Ulzburg in the promotion play-off final - attracting 20,000 fans.

"To pay a good salary is very important. We know this. I think also that we give them personal support," said Zietz.

"We can help players develop in our club, play with this atmosphere and we show we are very ambitious.

"We want to be playing in the Women's Champions League over the next few years. The players see this and they trust us."

Fans of the club, known as the 'Unioner', have a saying: "We don't go to football, we go to Union Berlin."

Whether it's the men's or the women's team, they come out in numbers to support the club. A small marketing team has helped drive the crowds, but it is ultimately down to the club's culture that their support for its women's team is so big.

Over 4,000 season tickets have already sold for their debut campaign in the top flight and there are plans to expand their stadium to a 40,000-capacity arena.

In a 3-1 friendly defeat by Real Madrid last week they had almost 10,000 supporters there, and a handful flew over from Berlin for their defeat by Villa.

That support is nothing new. When the club were close to losing their licence due to financial difficulties in 2004, a fundraising campaign called "Bleed for Union" encouraged supporters to donate blood to Berlin hospitals and give the compensation they received back to the club. They literally bled for Union Berlin.

"At the game with Real Madrid, players were very excited to see our fans. They were taking pictures," said Zeitz.

"That isn't normal in Spain or Germany. It's really cool get we get these big crowds. We made women's soccer at our club bigger.

"We went out and communicated. We said 'we have two professional teams, not a men's team and a women's team'.

"We showed everyone the captains of both teams. We told everyone there is no difference between them."

Fans of Union Berlin follow four rules known to locals as "the laws of booing" - don't boo your own players, don't make scapegoats of your own players, don't leave before the final whistle and give everything.

The atmosphere they create has been a key negotiator when trying to sign new players from Germany's elite clubs.

This summer, they signed former Eintracht Frankfurt captain and Poland international Tanja Pawollek.

Paying the players salaries which compare to that of Werder Bremen and Bayer Leverkusen means they can offer an elite environment to develop.

"At this moment, the money comes in from the men's side but every club can decide where that money goes to and what department to use it in," said Zeitz.

"We choose to use it to support women's football. It's not like other clubs in Germany. They say they support women's soccer but they don't do anything.

"We spoke about it, then we did it. In the future, we want to make it a business on the women's side. We want money to come into the women's team and to use it on the women's team.

"We want to support women's football in Germany. There are maybe three or four clubs in Germany who support professional women's football. The other clubs are not this ambitious. This, we have to change in Germany."