In the world of professional football, tradition and innovation rarely coexist comfortably. Yet VfL Wolfsburg, one of Germany's most established Bundesliga clubs, has managed to bridge this divide by transforming ChatGPT from an experimental tool into a comprehensive organizational capability that spans every department of the club.

The Challenge: Growing Impact Without Growing Teams

Modern football clubs face an increasingly complex reality. Fan expectations continue to rise, commercial partnerships demand more sophisticated engagement, and digital operations grow ever more intricate—all while budgets and headcount remain constrained. For VfL Wolfsburg, this tension created a clear imperative: find new ways of working that could scale impact without proportionally scaling teams.

The club identified recurring pain points across operations: repetitive drafting and translation tasks, critical knowledge locked with individual specialists creating bottlenecks, and expensive reliance on external agencies for routine work. "In football, tradition is an important value," explains Linus Lebugle, Head of Business Development. "Change isn't always easy. But innovation is part of our DNA—and we couldn't just keep adding people while the workload kept growing."

A Capability-First Approach to AI

What distinguishes VfL Wolfsburg's approach is their decision to treat Generative AI as a foundational organizational capability rather than a niche innovation project. Beginning in 2023, the club avoided the typical pitfalls of AI pilots—endless strategy presentations and disconnected proof-of-concepts—and instead focused on immediate, practical application.

"ChatGPT only creates sustainable advantages if it's understandable and usable for everyone—not just experts," says Claudio Demmer, Business Innovation Lead. The club launched hands-on workshops, department-led experimentation, and real-world use cases designed to deliver immediate time savings and cost reductions.

The key insight? Adoption accelerated when AI was applied to recurring tasks built around existing templates and workflows. Teams could generate useful outputs immediately without disrupting established processes, whether creating newsletters or generating merchandise product imagery.

Why ChatGPT Enterprise

After building experience with ChatGPT Team and Business licenses, VfL Wolfsburg recognized they had proven the concept but needed infrastructure to scale responsibly. The move to ChatGPT Enterprise wasn't about testing whether AI works—the club had already demonstrated clear value with trained teams and established use cases. The question was how to scale across all 350 employees while maintaining security and governance.

ChatGPT Enterprise was selected for several critical factors: strong output quality for everyday knowledge work, enterprise-grade security with EU server options (OpenAI doesn't use customer data for training), fast deployment without heavy IT requirements, and intuitive usability that works across non-technical roles. "If you want to change the way you work, you need tools that people aren't afraid of," Demmer notes. "ChatGPT removed that barrier immediately."

Custom GPTs: Making AI Tangible

The real transformation came when VfL Wolfsburg stopped discussing abstract "AI tools" and started building custom GPTs around specific workflows. Today, the club operates an ecosystem of nearly 100 custom GPTs across operations, communications, marketing, partnerships, HR, and strategy. Remarkably, about half were created independently by departments without direct involvement from the central AI team.

To encourage adoption, many assistants were given human-like names internally—without blurring accountability or decision-making—helping teams treat AI as accessible support rather than intimidating technology. What emerged was a repeatable model: identify a bottleneck, convert it into a GPT, and scale access across the club.

Standout examples include the Turf Disease GPT, where operations staff upload photos of turf issues and receive likely causes and structured treatment plans, democratizing specialist expertise. The Football School Invoicing GPT transforms structured inputs into ready-to-send branded invoices, eliminating formatting errors. "Hannah," an HR GPT Builder, guides users through seven standardized questions to auto-generate safe, consistent GPT prompts across non-technical teams. The ESG Check GPT creates structured sustainability assessments with evaluations, goals, and traffic-light scoring.

To sustain adoption, the club is building a network of "GPTlers"—internally trained GPT Champions who serve as departmental experts, supporting colleagues and helping them build their own GPTs. Though still early, this initiative is proving crucial for moving teams from basic usage to advanced, value-driving applications.

When Adoption Becomes Self-Propelling

Perhaps the most striking outcome for VfL Wolfsburg was how quickly adoption became self-sustaining once people experienced practical wins. Teams initially cautious about Generative AI became active drivers after seeing it solve real problems in their daily work—saving time, reducing friction, improving quality.

Even more surprising was who leaned in. Colleagues not typically considered "digital natives" began proactively requesting GPTs and showing genuine excitement in workshops. "That was the moment we realized this wasn't niche innovation," Demmer reflects. "When people see AI solving real problems in their own work, seniority or background doesn't matter anymore."

One workshop moment crystallized this shift: a former player, initially reserved, became enthusiastic after building a GPT to create creative storytelling for the kids he trains. "He walked out buzzing," Demmer recalls. "What we gained most is a spirit of new beginnings—this feeling of 'let's start now.'"

Measurable Impact

The results speak for themselves: over 50 custom GPTs in active daily use across operations, communications, marketing, HR, and administration; six-figure annual cost savings through reduced reliance on external agencies; faster drafting, translation, and standardization across core workflows; and broad-based adoption driving self-propelled usage from non-technical roles to former players.

Success is measured through direct cost avoidance, conservative time-savings assumptions, and qualitative departmental feedback—not vanity metrics. As Michael Meeske, CEO/Managing Director (Commercial), emphasizes: "For us, the key was proving value in everyday work. Once that was clear, scaling AI across the club became a leadership responsibility, not an experiment."

Looking Ahead

With proven use cases and growing momentum, VfL Wolfsburg is transitioning from targeted adoption to organization-wide capability. The next phase involves scaling ChatGPT Enterprise access to all employees, expanding the ecosystem of named "AI colleagues," and deepening advanced usage through GPT Champions.

Beyond internal productivity, the club sees potential in fan- and partner-facing experiences—personalization, internationalization, interactive content—once governance and accountability structures mature fully.

"AI is not a future topic in football anymore—it's something leaders need to take seriously today," Meeske concludes. "For us, the focus was never technology alone, but creating a capability that strengthens how the club works across departments."

Source: OpenAI - VfL Wolfsburg turns ChatGPT into a club-wide capability