Monarch Collective and Serviceplan Culture Launch Partnership

As they open a strategic collaboration, the Serviceplan Group's cultural-marketing unit Serviceplan Culture and women's-sports investment platform Monarch Collective publish "Whose Game Is It Going To Be?" – a set of theses on the culture, commerce and future of women's football. Released as the UEFA Women's Champions League begins its new league phase and a year out from the FIFA Women's World Cup 2027 in Brazil, it reframes the question for brands: not whether to invest, but what role they want to play in the game's next chapter.

Hamburg / Los Angeles, September 22, 2026. Monarch Collective and Serviceplan Culture are launching a strategic international collaboration in women's football and women's sports. Their shared aim is to advise brands on a question that reaches beyond conventional sponsorship: how to take part in the growth of women's football credibly, commercially and for the long term – helping to shape its culture rather than simply buying space within it. Their first joint output is the zine "Whose Game Is It Going To Be?", which gathers 11 theses on the culture, commerce and future of the women's game.

Women's football is at an unusual point. With its new league phase, the UEFA Women's Champions League has changed the structure of European club football, and the countdown to the FIFA Women's World Cup 2027 in Brazil brings the next global moment into view. The paper's central argument starts not with growth but with state: women's football is one of the few spaces in modern sport whose structures – governance, economics, ownership models, fan culture – are still open to design. In the men's game almost everything is inherited; here, much of it is still a choice. That window is rare, and it is closing.

The collaboration joins three areas of expertise. Monarch Collective brings a global view of investment, ownership, growth and the commercial infrastructure of women's sport. Serviceplan Culture contributes cultural strategy, brand-building and a deep understanding of fandom, community and cultural relevance – set within the wider brand, data, media and communications capabilities of the Serviceplan Group. The logic, in short: investment expertise + cultural intelligence + brand building. That combination is designed to move brands on from "should we invest in women's football?" to "which system are we helping to build?".

"Women's football is in a rare phase: much of what will define its economic future – ownership structures, growth models, how value is shared – is still a design choice rather than an inheritance. For investors and brands that is a genuine opportunity, but it comes with a condition: value is only built to last here when it is created with fans, not extracted from them. That is the perspective we bring together with Serviceplan's brand and cultural expertise," says Christine Jiang, Investor at Monarch Collective.

"Whose Game Is It Going To Be?" is not a conventional report; it offers no forecasts dressed as facts. It sets out 11 theses meant to provoke a better conversation and its authors are plain about the risk they take: they would rather be usefully wrong than safely vague. Four arguments are pointedly uncomfortable for anyone holding a marketing budget. First, women's football needs its own media grammar, because its audience is different – the overlap between women's and men's match attendance is often below 20%. Second, a full stadium does not mean more fans – a festival crowd is not a community, which is precisely the "tournament trap" around major events such as Brazil 2027. Third, heritage buys attention but not belonging – a club founded today holds a "blank constitution" that established institutions cannot easily replicate. Fourth, the authenticity that makes women's football attractive is a non-renewable resource, spent the moment the game is reduced to a conventional media plan.

"Women's football is one of the few spaces in modern sport whose structures are still open to design. For brands, that changes the question: it is no longer whether to invest, but which system you are helping to build. Buy inventory and you borrow an audience. Build with the communities that give this game its meaning and you earn a relationship that lasts once the attention moves on and that is the difference between short-term visibility and durable cultural relevance," says Sven Labenz, Managing Director at Serviceplan Culture.

Going forward, the partners intend to combine their respective strengths to advise brands across international women's sport, and women's football in particular. Brazil 2027 will create attention; the more useful question is what remains once that attention moves on. That is where the paper and the collaboration begins.

"Whose Game Is It Going To Be?" is available to download here.