At the Club World Cup in the summer heat of the USA, BVB defeated supposedly easier opponents such as Korean champions Ulsan HD, and South African champions Mamelodi Sundowns, in the group phase, and drew with Fluminense of Brazil. They then beat Mexican representatives Monterrey in the round of 16, before losing to Real Madrid in the quarter-finals.

Carsten Cramer can also play with a similar sense of freedom as the men dressed in black and yellow. The joint managing director of Borussia Dortmund has already achieved some of the key objectives of the trip to the USA.

FIFA is paying out 525 million dollars in participation payments and 475 million dollars in performance-related bonuses at the Club World Cup, and BVB secured more than 52 million dollars for reaching the last eight. But more important than the money, according to Cramer, are the opportunities the tournament offers for increased brand awareness. The Co-Managing Director sees the USA as a key growth market, but remains a realist. The Münster native understands that the Black & Yellows and the Bundesliga not only face tough competition from more glamorous names from England and Spain, which have a greater cultural proximity to the US public, but also with the popular sports of American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey.

Cramer therefore sees it as a particularly strong signal that the flagship store of equipment supplier Puma, with whom BVB has just extended its partnership on lucrative terms, was completely decked out in black and yellow on Fifth Avenue, New York shortly before the start of the Club World Cup. The Dortmund Managing Director knows how important Borussia Dortmund's image as an underdog from an old industrial region is for marketing to new target groups. This is precisely why he considers the partnership with the Pittsburgh Steelers football franchise, which has parallels to BVB not only because of its black and gold uniforms, to be significant.

Cramer, who will turn 57 shortly before Christmas, wants to make a virtue of modesty, but he is not a man who speaks quietly. He even tells representatives of sponsoring and business partners straight up if he has personally had a bad experience with their services. He also likes to have a sardonic remark at the ready – and when speaking in German, his sentences often end with the words „oder wat?“. After all, even as an underdog, barking loudly is not forbidden.

The father of four, who is regularly involved in negotiations for multi-million euro sponsorship contracts and is in professional contact with superstars, prefers down-to-earth players. At the same time, he realises that it has become increasingly difficult for Borussia to find players such as the former champion keeper Roman Weidenfeller, who spend almost their entire career at one club and who they can later involve as brand ambassadors. „Of course, it's sometimes frustrating for the fans when we repeatedly lose our best players, but we don't usually give them away for free,“ says Cramer. The motto „buy cheap, sell high“ is a central component of the business model that he and his fellow board members are driving forward.

For Cramer, who also leads the Dortmund Football Academy, supporting talented players with star potential is a matter close to his heart. He realised the integrative power of football shortly after leaving school, when he completed his community service in a „social hotspot“. Today, as a board member of the BVB foundation „Leuchte auf“, he is committed to social and cultural causes in the Ruhr region. Yet the man whose life revolves around Borussia Dortmund still has strong ties to the Münsterland region. He began his career as marketing manager at Preußen Münster before completing his law degree and later became managing director, having previously worked for the club as a press officer and stadium spokesman.

The latter job in particular gave him so much pleasure that, in addition to his main job, he also worked as a hall announcer for the USC Münster women's volleyball team and as a stadium announcer for Borussia Mönchengladbach. In 2000, Cramer moved to sports rights marketer Ufa, where he was responsible for Hamburger SV and later Borussia Dortmund. In 2010, he returned to BVB as Director of Sales and Marketing and was promoted to Managing Director in 2018 – especially with the expansion in the USA, he is now showing that the underdog BVB can not only bark loudly, but also has bite.