Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 07:21• Mart Oude Nijeweeme • Last update: 07:25

Following the new contract of director of football affairs Marc Overmars, Ajax hopes to hit another important one at management level. The Telegraph reports on Thursday that the club is in talks with commercial director Menno Geelen to also extend his contract until 2026. Discussions are currently being held by the Supervisory Board to keep the director on board for longer.

According to the newspaper, Geelen’s stay on as commercial director is an ‘explicit wish’ of general manager Edwin van der Sar and Overmars. The club looks to Bayern Munich as an example. The German record champion is regarded as the sole ruler, something Ajax hopes to achieve in the Netherlands. For a long time it was not a foregone conclusion that Geelen would extend his contract with Ajax. The director was coveted by foreign top clubs and associations, who tried to bring in the commercial man.

Geelen came into football ‘by accident’ when he started working as an editor and reporter at Talpa and RTL. After more than two years, he decided to exchange his career for a job in sports marketing, after which he was responsible for the major sponsorship contracts between the KNVB and NOC*NSF and Unilever. He was subsequently brought in by Ajax as account manager to maintain the sponsorship contract with the then main sponsor AEGON. Barely three months later, he was passed on as head of the sponsorship department. Today he is responsible for the entire commercial department.

The commercial director has been working at Ajax for 11 years and was named the most talented director in the industry by Leaders in Sport in London. Under Geelen’s leadership, the sponsorship income of the Amsterdammers grew from 22 million euros to 35 million euros. That amount corresponds to the sponsorship income of PSV and Feyenoord added together. Geelen is responsible at Ajax for the brand policy, all commercial external communication and sales and sponsorship of all companies that may associate with the club.

At the end of September, Ajax was awarded several times at the Creativity Awards. The team from Amsterdam received praise for their action from the melted down championship scale and saw this being rewarded with a Golden Lamp in the ‘PR’ category during the award ceremony. The clubs also received three so-called Silver Lamps in the categories ‘Integrated’, ‘Activations & Promotions’ and ‘Covid-19’. In total, 207 projects were nominated for an award from more than 950 entries. Ajax won four of these. The Dutch Creativity Awards are awarded annually to the organizations that were most creative in the field of marketing campaigns.