Nicole is an ambitious leader in sports marketing and business development. With her creativity, grid and ambition she has built the commercial team of the Royal Netherlands Football Association into an innovative and successful group of professionals. Nicole got her first experience in the sports industry during her final internship at the UCI in Geneva. From there she worked in South Africa for the UCI for 6 months on the World Cup MTB and BMX in Pietermaritzburg.
In 2016, at only 26 years of age, she became responsible for the sponsorship team and revenue stream of 24 million euros per year. She gained more traction with her creative approach of partnerships, new value propositions for potential partners and her very honest way of communicating. In 2018 she introduced the new partnership strategy within the federation. With a vision on partnerships that was unprecedented in the Netherlands and within the (federation) football industry. With lesser brand exclusivity for new partners but higher valued propositions, she wanted to break open traditional football partnerships.
This new strategy generated a growth in partnership revenue of 20% and unique partnerships with global brands like DHL and Bitvavo (first football federation with a crypto partner). An example of such new value propositions is the #samedream proposition. In which she incorporated multi-sports assets in her own proposition. By creating propositions consisting out of assets from 4 different sport federations, she opened up the market for football. With this proposition she targeted brands that had excluded football as potential sponsorship platform. Signing a 4-year deal with DHL, worth over 2 million per year.
In 2021 she introduced the internationalization strategy of the federation, targeting Indonesia and the US as potential growth markets. In Indonesia the Dutch national team activities are leading to local (media) partnerships and growth of the international fanbase. In the US this strategy targets football companies wanting to innovate through (tech driven) products for developing football leagues, clubs and coaches.
Currently she is responsible for all new partnerships and business development activities of the KNVB.
