She is the most famous athlete in Switzerland, a highly successful Instagrammer and star attacker for the Swiss national team: In an exclusive Forbes interview, Alisha Lehmann talks about the boom in women’s football, the upcoming World Cup in the summer, her mental health, period pain in professional sports — and about that , why envious people and haters leave her cold.
She should actually be stressed, but Alisha Lehmann is in no hurry. Shortly after 1 p.m. she appears in a photo studio in the Manchester suburb of Salford. The Aston Villa attacker has no training today; she drove two hours from Birmingham in her Mercedes off-road vehicle to the photo shoot in the north of England.
At the same time, her parents are traveling from Switzerland to England to cheer on their daughter in the last home game. Lehmann has organized a chauffeur to pick up father and mother and take them to their apartment. This means she can take the whole afternoon for the interview.
“I don’t like stress. When I do something, I want it to be perfect,” says Lehmann.Perfection – a good keyword. Because the 24-year-old’s life seems pretty perfect when you scroll through her social media feed: There you see Lehmann at the soccer field in Birmingham, at the pool in Portugal; in a jersey as well as in a fashionable blouse. The Swiss not only has over 13 million followers on Instagram, but also plays in the best football league in the world for an up-and-coming club that looks after the women’s team as professionally as the men.
Millions of fans from Pfäffikon to São Paulo look at Lehmann with admiration and perhaps a bit of envy.In addition to Instagram, Lehmann has another eight million followers on Tiktok — making her by far the most popular soccer player in the world and one of the most successful internet stars of our time. Not even her Swiss compatriot and tennis idol Roger Federer (twelve million followers on Instagram) reaches so many people online. This makes Lehmann a valuable brand ambassador and mega-influencer – and an influential voice of Gen Z. But who is the person behind the online icon? What does your analog life look like? And what does the athlete and aspiring entrepreneur want to achieve?
Since the 2022 European Championship, women’s football has been experiencing a boom. Sport is considered a new billion-dollar industry with gigantic growth potential – not just in Europe, but worldwide. UEFA speaks of a “strong development of women’s football in recent years”. According to their calculations, the commercial value of sport could increase sixfold in the coming decade, reaching a value of around €600 million per year.Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp came out as a fan; During the European Championships he explained: “Tactically and technically it is an incredibly high level. I love watching it.” And not only has the respect and appreciation for women’s games grown in the traditionally male-dominated industry, but from an economic perspective, investing in women’s teams is also worthwhile, at least for the internationally renowned clubs – on the one hand, for image reasons, because sport rightly serves as a symbol of inclusion; On the other hand, the women’s teams are now generating profits, although on average only €2 million, as the consulting firm Deloitte calculated.
The World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in the summer is now set to set new records in terms of spectator interest. However, the dispute between Fifa and TV broadcasters in the run-up to the tournament seems bizarre: the association is driving up the prices for broadcast rights; Fifa brings “moral responsibility” into play and thus puts the broadcasters under pressure. The German ARD refers to its “market-driven” offer – which is of course far below the prices for broadcasting the men’s World Cup.Regardless of who shows the tournament and how the rights negotiations end: the upcoming World Cup should be a career highlight for Lehmann. She missed the 2022 European Championships — she officially withdrew from the Swiss national team for “personal reasons”. There was speculation about a falling out with former coach Nils Nielsen. Lehmann no longer wants to comment on this; She’s just looking forward, she says. Lehmann offered the new trainer Inka Grings her comeback — and both apparently get along well together. The attacker is enthusiastic about Gring’s work: “Her German mentality is good for the team. She pushes us.”
Since the 2022 European Championship, women’s football has been experiencing a boom. Sport is considered a new billion-dollar industry with gigantic growth potential – not just in Europe, but worldwide. UEFA speaks of a “strong development of women’s football in recent years”. According to their calculations, the commercial value of sport could increase sixfold in the coming decade, reaching a value of around €600 million per year.Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp came out as a fan; During the European Championships he explained: “Tactically and technically it is an incredibly high level. I love watching it.” And not only has the respect and appreciation for women’s games grown in the traditionally male-dominated industry, but from an economic perspective, investing in women’s teams is also worthwhile, at least for the internationally renowned clubs – on the one hand, for image reasons, because sport rightly serves as a symbol of inclusion; On the other hand, the women’s teams are now generating profits, although on average only €2 million, as the consulting firm Deloitte calculated.The World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in the summer is now set to set new records in terms of spectator interest. However, the dispute between Fifa and TV broadcasters in the run-up to the tournament seems bizarre: the association is driving up the prices for broadcast rights; Fifa brings “moral responsibility” into play and thus puts the broadcasters under pressure.
The German ARD refers to its “market-driven” offer – which is of course far below the prices for broadcasting the men’s World Cup.Regardless of who shows the tournament and how the rights negotiations end: the upcoming World Cup should be a career highlight for Lehmann. She missed the 2022 European Championships — she officially withdrew from the Swiss national team for “personal reasons”. There was speculation about a falling out with former coach Nils Nielsen. Lehmann no longer wants to comment on this; She’s just looking forward, she says. Lehmann offered the new trainer Inka Grings her comeback — and both apparently get along well together. The attacker is enthusiastic about Gring’s work: “Her German mentality is good for the team. She pushes us.”
Lehmann grew up in Tägertschi, a small rural community between Bern and Thun. The mother is a dentist, the father is an architect, at home they are on a farm with horses, dogs and cats; the aunt lives right next door. Lehmann discovered at the age of six that she had more talent than many of the boys she played soccer with. At the age of 19, she moved from the Young Boys Bern women’s team abroad, to London, to West Ham United. “Many people said back then: ‘You’re still too young to take this step!’, but my inner voice said: ‘You have to do it.’” Her parents always supported her and didn’t insist on classical training or studying . If football hadn’t worked out, she would probably have studied law or medicine.
She has long been paid homage to in pop culture: rapper and “Under 30” list maker Shirin David, with whom she is friends, dedicated a line to her in the song “Babsi Bars”: “Control the game like Alisha Lehmann at a soccer game,” they say there. But on the pitch, Lehmann didn’t always control the game according to high expectations — she was loaned out from West Ham to Everton and moved to Aston Villa in 2021, where she has scored five goals in 20 games this season and is perhaps enjoying her best time. She is not a classic goalscorer; She is supposed to serve winger Rachel Daly, currently the top scorer in the English Women’s Super League.But many of her sponsors are only of marginal interest in Lehmann’s statistics. Their success as an advertising icon is not only dependent on their shape, their appeal is so enormous. She advertises for Coca-Cola and Adidas, she is a brand ambassador for the EA Sports computer game Fifa 23 and has her own collection in the game. In her online shop she sells products under the Alisha Lehmann brand, from drinking bottles to calendars — and she supports the gaming app Bootbag, where players can test their football knowledge.
Lehmann’s rise to global online icon was rapid. In the past six months alone, her Instagram account grew by another seven million followers. Influencers with Lehmann’s reach can easily earn €20,000 with a sponsored post. With two posts, she would have earned almost as much as another English professional player in the whole year — because, according to the BBC, the average annual salary of a player in the top women’s league is around €50,000 a year.However, due to the popularity of the sport, salaries are increasing rapidly. Top stars like Arsenal captain Leah Williamson earn around €250,000 a year (for comparison: among men, a top performer earns this amount per week). There are also sponsorship deals, which also become more lucrative as attention increases.At Olympique Lyon, the serial winner of the Women’s Champions League, the salaries for the most famous stars are even half a million euros. And Americans Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe are the wealthiest female soccer players, with more than $5 million in earnings, according to Forbes.
Lehmann’s salary at Aston Villa is rather average, the club is not among the elite in the Women’s Super League. But Lehmann’s business concept is based primarily on advertising campaigns for global brands, says her advisor Dawn Goddard. Your client is an athlete, not an influencer who promotes individual products. Thanks to her popularity, Lehmann is one of the top earners in her industry among brand ambassadors.Lehmann also uses her reach and influence to draw attention to women-specific issues in sport, such as how the menstrual cycle influences performance and susceptibility to injury. Alexia Putellas (Barcelona), Dzsenifer Marozsán (Lyon), Beth Mead and Leah Williamson (Arsenal) as well as Giulia Gwinn (FC Bayern) are among the best footballers of the moment and tore their cruciate ligaments last year — sometimes for the second time. Why women in particular are five times more likely to sustain this injury has not yet been researched. Lower muscle mass or an increased tendency to have knock-knees could increase the risk — and periods could also be a cause. When she seriously injured her ankle in 2019, Lehmann was also on her period.This is also why she is now calling for better care for female athletes and praises Chelsea FC: The women’s team there has its own coach who responds to a player’s menstrual cycle with nutritional supplements and an individual training program. Players also use an app to share information about the cycle with the support staff. “When I was younger, I always played through despite severe period pain. “Now I have less severe pain,” says Lehmann.
Aside from the online staging, Lehmann is far more down-to-earth than her Instagram profile might suggest. She cooks Älplermagronen (Swiss cream macaroni) for her teammates or brings them home-made applesauce to the dressing room. Her favorite animal is the cheetah, the fastest land animal in the world; she got it tattooed on her arm. Because she likes to play blackjack and poker with fellow players on the bus while traveling away, she wears a crown on her finger — as a symbol of the queen of the card game.At some point Lehmann wants to return to Switzerland: “It’s just a really good country, especially the food is much better there!” But her life is currently too exciting to make plans for the future. She has her motto engraved on her neck: “Be brave.” Her career, in which she has always pursued her own wishes and goals, with ambition and independence, fits in with this. As an athlete and entrepreneur, Lehmann is still at the beginning of her career. According to her manager, her appeal affects all cultures and Alisha has long been a global icon. “She has something unique that sets her apart from most other stars.”When Alisha Lehmann appears in front of the camera in the Swiss national team jersey after almost two hours in the mask, her appearance is flawless. The make-up, the long blonde hair, the painted nails, the black eyelashes – a mask modeled with a lot of effort. And, as always, it fits perfectly.
